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PTEMBER 1526 
_ BY BON DICKERMAN So — 
RE (QUITE A LONE WAY) STEAN “HEAT, SCHOOL, & HOT<~ CHOCOLATE. 





FIRST SNOW-BALL-FIGHT. 


MILKY WAYS ZODIACS 3 


WORIZ ON MIRAGES, ETC. 


SEA-SERPENTS & MONSTERS, PROBABLY Ze 


LASF-ROSE-OF-SUMMER $8 








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BY DAVID BINNEY PUTNAM 





e Davip Gors VorYAGING 
” Davip Gors TO GREENLAND , - 





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Cap’n Bob Bartlett. — 


DAVID GOES TO 
GREENLAND 


BY 
DAVID BINNEY PUTNAM 


Wit a ForreworpD BY 
CAP’N BOB BARTLETT 





ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS, WITH DECORATIONS 
FROM DRAWINGS MADE ESPECIALLY BY THE ESKIMO, 
KAKUTIA, AT KARNAH ON WHALE SOUND 


G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 
1926 


Copyright, 1926 
by 
Perry Mason Company 


(The Youth's Companion) 


Copyright, 1926 
by 
G. P. Putnam’s Sons 


First Impression, October, 1926 
Second Impression, October, 1926 


Third Impression, October, 1926 
Fourth Impression, November, 1926 





Made in the United States of America 


To 
My Best FRIEND 


WHO REALLY SHOULD 
HAVE GONE TO GREENLAND 


MOTHER 








FOREWORD 


AVID has asked me to write a foreword 

for his book, which I have seen him 

working at during these last three months as 

we sailed northward. Yesterday I read the 

manuscript which had just been typewritten 

from those painstaking penciled pages of the 
boy’s. 

As I read I thought more than ever how 
fortunate David is, first to go with ‘Uncle 
Will”’ (Dr. Beebe) as far south as the Galap- 
agos Islands on the Equator last year, and 
now to North Greenland. For anyone, of 
thirteen or thirty-nine, that’s a pretty fine 
spread and a great experience. 

I must confess that it was with some mis- 
givings I thought of the youngster going with 
us. While it was only a summer trip, almost 
anything is likely to happen in the Arctic 
and there’s always a chance of having a pretty 

Vv 


FOREWORD 


rough time—hard, anyway, for a boy. But 
right here, as the expedition is drawing to a 
close (and some of it was fairly strenuous), I 
must say these misgivings did not materialize. 

David is a thoroughbred and has a real 
sane idea of getting along. No one who reads 
his bully story can fail to realize this. From 
start to finish I have watched him closely and 
he has measured up handsomely to all, and 
more, that any observer could require. 

And David is still a boy. He has learned 
much on the Beebe trip and on this one, 
things that will sink deep into his young 
soul. I believe in the years to come he will 
reap well of what he has sown, and what has 
been sown for him. School is fine and school 
must come first. But surely if opportunity 
offers to combine such experiences as these 
with ‘book learning,’’ it seems to me the 
grandest sort of education. 

I have heard it said that this youngster is 
having no real boy’s life. Anyone who feels 

Vi1 


FOREWORD 
that just doesn’t know David. They haven’t 
seen him with lads of his own age, as I have, 
on the football field with his friends at home 
or with young Eskimos on the Morrissey and 
ashore in Greenland. 

David is still a boy, but a boy who has hap- 
pened to have a rather wide experience. He’s 
not a paragon. He’s just plain B-O-Y. 
And for many years to come he will remain 
young, with a young heart and the natural 
unspoiled freshness and happiness of youth. 
And to me, who have not had many boys 
around me as I’ve knocked about, it’s been 
a real pleasure to have him along. 

I wonder if many boys who read David's 
simple story here, with its many interesting 
incidents, won’t become jealous. I’m sure I 
should, if I could turn the clock back more 
years than one likes to think about. What 
youngster wouldn’t want to go hunting three 
thousand miles from home, and see walrus and 
polar bear and narwhal and all the rest of it? 

vil 


FOREWORD 


That’s really what this book should do. 
Not really make less lucky boys jealous, you 
understand, but stir up their blood and make 
them realize that there’s lots in life over the 
hill and beyond the horizon. A stirring-up 
like that won’t hurt them. It’s good tonic 
for the youngsters who are lounging away their 
youth and getting bad starts fussing around 
dances and clubs and autos and all that sort 
of thing, when they ought to be out getting 
their hands dirty, their muscles hard and their 
minds cleaned out with the honest experiences 
of the sea and far places. 

I hope the boys who read their way to 
Greenland with David in this little book (and | 
their Dads, too) will become imbued with 
David's spirit and find for themselves worth- 
while Ultima Thules. 


ROBERT A. BARTLETT. 


On Board the Morrissey, 
BAFFIN BAY, 
September 5, 1926. 


Vili 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 


I.—OFF TO GREENLAND . : : : 3 


II.—THROUGH THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE 16 


III.—WE REACH GREENLAND ; : AG 
IV.—ALONG THE GREENLAND COAST . Neha 12) 
V.—UPERNIVIK AND THE DucK ISLANDS . 49 
VI.—Across MELVILLE Bay : p SAA 6 
VII.—SHIPWRECK : , ; ; Ue ire: 
VIII.—TuHeE Morrissey REPAIRED ., : Pi as >. 
IX.—Ouvr First NARWHAL . i : net OO 
X.—Our Eskimo ARTIST . ; ‘ Be Tae 


XI.—WALRUS HUNTING ; ; ; mate 
1X 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


XII.—Across TO JONES SOUND 


XITI.—NANOOK! . i ‘ “ 


XIV.—AT Ponp’s INLET r . 


XV.—MorE BEARS . : ° 


PAGE 
125 


135 


143 
156 





ILLUSTRATIONS 


“Trey SET ME TO WORK WITH A PAINT BRUSH”’ 


WILL BARTLETT, MATE; “SKIPPER Tom” Gus- 
HUE, Bo’suN; RALPH SPRACKLIN; AND BILLY 
PRITCHARD, THE COOK : 4 : ; 


DAVID AND HIS CORONA F ; , 


THE SKIPPER TELLS DAvIp ABOUT TAKING OB- 
SERVATIONS ‘ d : ; i , 


DAVID TRIES CARRYING ART YOUNG THROUGH 
THE Mupb 4 p : s : : 


IN THE Cross TREES . : : : é 
THE Morrissey IN JONES SOUND ; ; 
A BAFFIN BAY PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR Z 


WE GET A BASKING SHARK AT HOLSTEINSBORG 


X1 


FACING 
PAGE 


Cap’N BoB BARTLETT . , . Frontispiece 


6 


12 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


CARL SHOWS A SOUTH GREENLAND YOUNGSTER 
HOW TO USE A PATHEX MOTION PICTURE 
CAMERA 


LOOKING DOWN OVER A BIRD ROOKERY . 


Nits, DAvip AND MATAK, SON OF POOAD- 
LOONA 


ROBERT’ PEARY TRIES A KAYAK . : . 


ART YOUNG TRIES AN EIDER Duck EGG FROM 
THE ESKIMO CACHE ON THE DucCK ISLANDS 


THE KinGc Doc oF GOVERNOR OTTO’s TEAM, 
WITH HIs QUEEN 


FEEDING THE DoGs AT UPERNIVIK . 
In A Fyjorp BACK OF UPERNIVIK 


TUPIKS, THE ESKIMO SUMMER Houses MADE 
OF SKINS, AT KARNAH 


THE Morrissey ON THE REEF OFF NORTHUMBER- 
LAND ISLAND 


VIEW FROM SHORE OF THE WRECKED WMor- 
rissey : : [ ; : ‘ 


WHERE THE Morrissey’s FALSE KEEL RIPPED 
OFF ON THE ROCKS 


WHEN THE ESKIMOS CAME TO SHIPWRECK 
CAMP ON NORTHUMBERLAND ISLAND . 5 


X11 


FACING 
PAGE 


35 
42 


43 
52 


53 


56 
a 
64 


65 


74 


79 


80 


81 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Art SHoots DucKs AMONG THE ICEBERGS FROM 
THE DORY WITH THE JOHNSON ENGINE 


Dap TriEs His HAND aT NETTING DOVEKIES 


CARL AND ART TRY SWIMMING AT THE FOOT OF 
THE GLACIER . : ‘ : : ; 


Up ON THE GLACIER, WHERE THE GREAT ICE 
Cap COMES DOWN TO THE SEA . : : 


HARRY RAVEN, ZOOLOGIST, SHOWS HOW TO 
CLEAN A NARWHAL SKULL . : : : 


WORKING ON A NARWHAL SKELETON 


KAKUTIA OF KARNAH, THE ESKIMO ARTIST WHO 
MADE THE SKETCHES USED IN THIS BOOK, 
ON THE Morrissey IN WHALE SOUND . h 


Two BLonp Eskimos! DaAvID AND NILS ? 


POOADLOONA THROWS His HARPOON AT A WAL- 
RUS . ‘ ‘ ; : f : 


WALRUS ON DecK. ALL THE MEAT WENT TO 
THE ESKIMOS, THE SKELETONS AND HIDES TO 
THE MUSEUM . : : ; ; ; 


‘“HALITOSIS,’ THE BABY WALRUS ROPED By 
CARL . : : : : 5 1 


HOISTING A WALRUS ON BOARD , A ; 


DRESSING A WALRUS. LEFT TO RIGHT: Dan, 
Jor, ArT, DAVID AND CARL ; : : 


Xili 


FACING 
PAGE 


90 
gI 


96 


97 


106 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


ART AND A DEAD WALRUS ON AN ICE PAN IN 
JONES SOUND 


ENOUGH FOR SEVERAL FINE Duck MESSES 
ENJOYING OUR ATWATER KENT RADIO. 


KELLERMAN ‘‘SHOOTS’’ SOME ESKIMOS OF IN- 
GLEFIELD GULF . 


KUDLUKTOO AND MATAK SHOW DAVID THE 
RIGHT Way TO EAT NARWHAL HIDE, A 
PRIZED ESKIMO DELICACY 


Dr. RASMUSSEN SHOWS DAVID AN ANCIENT 
ESKIMO HARPOON HEAD 


Two ARCTIC HARE FROM POND’S INLET 
THE POLAR BEARS ON THE ICEBERG 


THE POLAR BEAR AND HER Two Cuss SwIM 
AWAY FROM THE BERG 


CARL AND ONE OF THE POLAR BEAR Cuss HE 
ROPED 


ART YOUNG AND THE BEAR HE KILLED WITH 
Bow AND ARROW ’ : ; : : 


Xiv 


FACING 
PAGE 


131 
136 


137 


140 


I4I 


150 


I5I 
158 


159 


164 


165 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 














CHAPTER I 


OFF TO GREENLAND 


AST year I went on the Beebe trip to 
the Galapagos Islands on the steamer 
Arcturus which was all fixed up especially 
for the journey. This was a scientific ex- 
pedition down to the Equator to get deep 
sea specimens, some of them caught at a depth 
of nearly three miles. The islands where we 
went are on the Equator six hundred miles 
west of Ecuador in South America, and go- 
ing down we passed through the Panama 
Canal. 

“Uncle Will’’—that’s Mr. Beebe—let me 
go on the Pacific part of this expedition as a 
sort of junior guest. We had many new ex- 
periences, some of them pretty exciting. 

3 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


There was diving in a helmet away below the 
surface of the water, and seeing volcanoes 
in eruption and lava streams flowing into the’ 
sea, and harpooning a big devil fish. Al- 
though I was the youngest member of the 
party—my twelfth birthday was down at 
Cocos Island south of Panama—TI was able 
to have a part in almost everything. And 
of course it was great fun. 

Captain Bob Bartlett is a great friend of 
Dad’s. It was Cap’n Bob, you remember, 
who was with Admiral Peary when he first 
reached the North Pole in 1909. Well, he 
and Dad often talked of a Greenland expedi- 
tion, which the Captain said could be about 
the finest kind of a trip, with lots to do and 
see. 

The American Museum of Natural History 
in New York wanted some things from the 
North for its new Hall of Ocean Life, as well 
as Arctic birds. So Dad said he would or- 
ganize an expedition and get the specimens 

4 


OFF TO GREENLAND 


they wanted. Among these are Narwhal, 
Greenland Brown Shark, walrus, all kinds of 
seal and many birds. Of course we couldn’t 
get all we were looking for, but even a part of 
it would make the trip worth while. 

I was told that I could go on this trip to 
Greenland, and that as soon as school was 
over I was to go down to the shipyard on 
Staten Island where the Morrissey was being 
refitted, and that there would be plenty for 
me to do there. 

We are to go as far North as about seven 
hundred miles this side of the Pole. In all 
we shall cover more than seven thousand miles 
and will be back in October. Perhaps if we’re 
late Dad will send me down by train from 
Sydney, for school. And we're taking a 
couple of school books too, which he says 
I'll have to work at when there is time. 

It is certainly exciting to look forward to 
the adventures which I hope we will have. 
I’ve a Newton 2.56 rifle and a twenty-two 

) 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


rifle and I hope to get a chance to do some 
shooting, although I think the most fun will 
be helping in the scientific and taxidermy 
work, and in getting the motion pictures. 
And part of my job is to write a record as we 
go along, to make a little book later. 

Last year Mother took me below the Equa- 
tor. And this year I’m going with Dad 780 
miles north of the Arctic Circle—that is, if 
we have luck with the ice. Anyway, I’m 
certainly a lucky thirteen year old boy! 

school closed on Thursday afternoon. Fri- 
day I went to Dad’s office and looked over 
some equipment. He and I had been work- 
ing over the equipment and making lists and 
generally getting ready, for weeks. In the 
afternoon we went by ferry to West New 
Brighton on Staten Island to McWilliams’ 
shipyard, where our boat, the Morrissey, was. 

The Morrissey is a two masted Newfound- 
land fishing schooner. She is one hundred 
feet long and has a twenty-two foot beam, 

6 





“They Set Me to Work with a Paint Brush.” 





Will Bartlett, Mate; ‘Skipper Tom’? Gushue, Bo’sun; Ralph Spracklin; and 
Billy Pritchard, the Cook. 


OFF TO GREENLAND 


and draws about fourteen feet when heavily 
loaded. With us now she draws probably 
about twelve. Her crew are all Newfound- 
landers, wonderful sailors in fair weather or 
foul. Captain Bartlett owns her, and Dad 
and some friends refitted her, putting in an 
engine and making many changes to take 
care of our party. 

Jim is the tallest of the crew. He is over 
six feet and looks like a cow puncher with 
small hips and broad shoulders. He is a fine 
ship’s carpenter. ‘Tom, the boatswain, is the 
oldest and most experienced. He can make 
most anything that belongs on a sailing vessel. 
He was with Peary on the Roosevelt on a 
couple of his trips to the North, including 
his one to the Pole. Joe is the biggest man 
of the crew, and Ralph the youngest. 

Billy Pritchard is about the most important 
man on board, to my way of thinking. Heis 
the cook. Bill is pretty small, but he is a 
grand cook and has had lots of experience 

7 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


at sea. He has been in the far north and 
has been wrecked four times. When the 
Morrissey came down from Newfoundland to 
get us, when the ship jumped in a heavy sea 
Billy got thrown clean out of his bunk across 
the galley and on top of the stove. Billy’s 
helper is Don, who is always very nice to me. 

Our skipper is Robert A. Bartlett who was 
with Peary and has spent years of his life 
in the Arctic and is about the most experi- 
enced ice navigator living today. Cap’n Bob 
is most awfully nice to me and he and his 
brother Will Bartlett, who is the mate, say 
they will help me learn the names of the 
ropes and to box the compass and all that. 
You see, I’ve never made a trip on a sailing 
vessel before, and there is lots to learn. 

Well, when I got to the ship, a paint brush 
was stuck in my hand and I was told to start 
painting on the hull, as we were then in dry- 
dock having a hole bored in the stern for the 


shaft for the new propeller. That day I 
8 


OFF TO GREENLAND 


painted pretty near a quarter of the hull and 
all day Saturday there was other painting— 
bunks, lockers, hatch covers, etc. We had 
lots of fine Masury paint which had been 
given to the Expedition. And there was 
plenty of cleaning-up work to do. 

The Morrissey is divided into three different 
cabins. The fo’castle has six bunks where 
the crew sleep. It is used for the galley also. 
You know, on a ship the kitchen is called 
“galley.” Aft of that comes the main cabin 
where most of us sleep. There is a big table 
in the middle of the room which is used for 
eating, writing, working, etc. There are 
twelve bunks and the wireless outfit in this 
cabin, and a large skylight put in where the 
old cargo hatch used to be. 

The wireless is a short wave outfit, run by 
Ed Manley, who is an amateur who volun- 
teered for the job and who just graduated 
from Marietta College in Ohio. The fine big 
radio equipment, with which we expect to 

9 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


be able to talk right to home even from north 
of the Arctic Circle, was given to the Expedi- 
tion by Mr. Atwater Kent and the National 
Carbon Company who make the Eveready 
batteries. 

Then comes the engine room which was 
once the after hold where they stored fish and 
carried coal when the boat was used for 
freight. All around the engine are stores, 
crowded in tight so they can’t possibly shift 
when the boat rolls around in a storm. Some 
of them belong to Knud Rasmussen and 
some to Professor Hobbs whom we will pick 
up at Sydney. He is going to South Green- 
land to study the birth of storms on the Ice 
Cap there. We are picking up Rasmussen 
at Disko Island on Greenland and are taking 
these stores for him to his trading station at 
Thule, near Cape York. Rasmussen is a great 
Danish explorer and an expert on Eskimo. 

Astern of the engine room comes the after 
cabin where the Captain, Dad, Mr. Raven 

IO 


OFF TO GREENLAND 


and Mr. Streeter sleep. There are six bunks, 
a table, a small stove and the only chair on 
board. Over the table is a shelf of books 
mostly about the Arctic and adventure. I 
have some special ones of my own to read, 
including ZJwo Years Before the Mast, Doctor 
Luke of the Labrador, The Cruise of the Ca- 
chelot and Richard Carvel. And then Dad 
has waiting for me a couple of school books, 
Latin and an English grammar, which don’t 
sound quite so much fun. 

Most of our own stores are in a special 
store room next to the galley and stored in 
the run and lazarette away aft. On deck we 
have over fifty barrels of fuel oil for our 
Standard Diesel engine which you probably 
know burns oil and not gasoline. 

We started on Sunday, June twentieth, 
from the American Yacht Club on Long | 
Island Sound. That’s at Rye, our home, and 
most of the men in our party visited at home 
with us before we started. 

Il 


cs 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


It was a hot sunny day, and a great many 
people came out in launches and inspected 
the Morrissey. ‘There was a big lunch party 
at the Club and Commodore Mallory gave 
Dad and Cap’n Bob the flag of the Club to 
take North with us. At about a quarter to 
five we got clear of the visitors and got the 
anchor up and started down the Sound. A 
great many yachts and small boats were all 
around us, blowing horns and whistles and 
giving us a grand send-off. 

Grandpa's yacht, the Florindia, took all the 
mothers and sisters and wives of our crowd, 
with my Mother and my little brother June. 
They went along with us as far as Sound 
Beach, Connecticut. And then, when they 
had tooted their last salute, and we had an- 
swered on our fog horn, we were actually 
off for the North. 

Monday was a nice calm day which gave 
Art Young and myself a chance to stow our 
stuff. He bunks just below me so we have 

I2 


*BU0IOD SIH{ pue praeq 





"sUOHRAIOSGO BUTYL jNOGy plarq s]joy sreddiyg oyy 





a 
OFF TO GREENLAND 


to go half and half on the lockers. Art is 
the bow and arrow expert who was in Africa 
shooting lions. In America he has killed 
grizzly bear, moose and Kadiak bear with his 
arrows. He hopes to try his luck with a 
polar bear and walrus. 

Monday morning, our first day out, we 
saw eighteen airplanes near Block Island, at 
the eastern end of Long Island Sound, all 
headed for New York. Perhaps they were 
going to welcome Commander Byrd, who was 
expected back in a couple of days, coming 
home from England after flying to the North 
Pole. Dad and Mr. Byrd are friends and he 
was at our house a little before he started on 
his trip in the Chantier. 

There was a fine wind and a pretty small 
sea running all day. It was nice and sunny, 
but very cold, so that we all put on lots of 
sweaters and coats. Everyone ate dinner and 
supper that day. As we were going up 
through Vineyard Sound in the afternoon a 

13 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


submarine and a lot of Coast Guard vessels 
passed us. 

Then it began to get rougher with a stiff 
southerly breeze which was fine for sailing. 
On the next afternoon we saw a lot of small 
whales, about 25 feet long. Two or three of 
them jumped most out of the water, and 
once about fifty yards ahead of our boat I 
saw one jump completely out. He looked like 
a huge bullet. 

That day almost all of our gang were sick, 
and even a couple of the crew. I spent most 
of the time on deck, listening to Mr. Raven 
and Van Heilner tell stories about spear traps 
and the way the Malay natives made and 
set traps for animals. 

We were rocking so hard and keeling over 
so much that often the water would come in 
through both port and starboard scuppers. I 
was looking through a scupper hole when we 
hit a big wave and all of a sudden the water 
came right in and hit me in the face as I 

14 


OFF TO GREENLAND 


turned around from watching Captain Bob 
slack the main sheet. 

Ralph, one of the crew, has showed me 
how to make chafing gear from rope. It is 
used to keep the sails from slapping and 
wearing out against the steel cables. And 
Jim has taught me the names of the sails and 
is starting on the ropes. 

The last two days of the trip to Sydney 
were not so good, with a lot of fog and some 
rain. Now and then we heard fog signals on 
the shore of Nova Scotia, and when the fog 
lifted saw the shore and lighthouses. It is 
great fun to go up in the crow’s nest. 





15 





CHAPTER II 


THROUGH THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE 


E arrived in Sydney on Thursday morn- 

ing, a few minutes before two o'clock, 

and I stayed up to see what happened. By 

good luck there was no fog, which made 
things easier. 

The first thing in the morning we cleaned 
up our cabin, and afterward we all went 
ashore, to a little hotel where we had baths. 
Bathing on the Morrissey is a very rare thing, 
although probably later on we will use the 
big round washtub which was meant for 
clothes but which I suppose can take us too. 
When Dad refitted the vessel, at the shipyard 
down at Staten Island, they put on the deck 
a big steel water tank which holds about 750 

16 


THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE 


gallons. Then there are the water barrels too 
so that we really are pretty well fixed. 

Up North, Captain Bob tells me, when we 
get out of water we just go alongside an ice- 
berg and pump the water from pools on the 
berg over to our tank. For this we have a 
little pump affair with a piece of garden hose 
at each end. ‘The melted water on the bergs 
is fresh, unless sea spray has blown up into 
the pools. 

That morning in Sydney I wrote some 
letters, to Mother and others. And then in 
the afternoon Robert Peary, Art Young, Ed 
Manley, Fred Linekiller and myself went over 
to the town of Sydney in our little motor 
launch. Sydney is about five miles away 
across a big bay, and is far larger than North 
Sydney where our ship lies. 

Over there we saw a very big old square 
rigger with gun ports all along her sides. 
she was once a frigate of the British Navy, 
I suppose about the time of Old Ironsides. 

17 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


We went aboard and looked around to see 
if we could find any loose belaying pins for 
my collection, but without luck. 

The next day Dad, Art Young, Carl, Mr. 
Kellerman and I went off to see if we could 
find any trout fishing in one of the brooks 
which came down to the bay a few miles 
from our anchorage. We left our boat on a 
sort of beach and walked up the stream to 
try our luck. ‘There wasn’t any. After fish- 
ing for a while we went back to the boat, 
which we had anchored a little off shore. 
But the tide had gone out and we found her 
nearly high and dry in the mud. 

We pushed and we shoved and pulled in 
mud up to our knees for quite a time until 
finally we got her off. Art had no boots on 
so I tried to carry him out but he was too 
heavy. Then we brought the boat pretty 
close in and Dad tried to carry Art out. 
Dad had Art on his back—Art is a big man 
and weighs I suppose 190 pounds—and was 

18 


‘PNY OY} Ysnomyy sunoZ jy SurArseg soy, praeq 











In the Cross Trees, 





THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE 


starting to come out when the extra weight 
shoved his feet right down in the sticky mud 
over his boots and when he tried to pull up 
his legs one boot came off and they both lost 
their balance and fell into the mud and water. 
They took it as a joke and had to walk nearly 
a mile before we found a place where they 
could get aboard easily. 

Over at another beach we ate our lunch 
which we had brought with us. And near 
there Art and I got the first game of the ex- 
pedition. After sneaking up on it we charged 
in. And what do you think we found? 

It was a big clam bed. Altogether we dug 
about a bushel and that night we had a fine 
clam chowder. Not quite as exciting as get- 
ting a walrus, but at least it was fun and we 
claimed the clams really were the first game 
brought back to the Morrissey. 

We saw Newfoundland for the first time on 
the twenty-eighth of June. It wasa very pretty 
sight, the mountains with snow on their sides 

19 


t. ‘lp 
gnc 
fy 

oie, . 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


that had not melted away on account of the 
very late season. Dad says wherever one 
goes it always seems that there is an unusual 
season. On some of the hills the sun was 
shining and on others great shadows were 
floating around. In some ways they looked 
much like the hills in Montana, rolling and 
mostly bare. 

We saw three little fishing schooners off 
the Bay of Islands, which is a big bay on the 
western shore of Newfoundland. It took us 
from four o’clock until eight to cross the bay. 
We passed one of these boats about seven- 
thirty and heard someone playing the cornet, 
not very well. It sounded queer to hear a 
sound like that come floating across these far- 
away waters. 

There was a beautiful sunset, so red that 
it looked like blood dripping out of the sky. 
Ahead the weather looked fine, but astern 
was a big black cloud with lightning darting 
out of it every once in a while. And it sure 

20 


THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE 


did storm. It was so dark that we couldn’t 
see a thing. On deck I fell two or three times, 
as it’s pretty hard to get around in the dark 
on account of the deck cargo—barrels, dories, 
motor-boats and the Hobbs canoes, beside 
lots of lumber and rope. | 

The wind was blowing like everything and 
the rain came down in torrents. Art and 
myself put on our oilskins and boots and went 
on deck to cover up the skylights that were 
leaking an awful lot. Skylights never seem 
to work quite right, anyway. We put canvas 
and tarpaulins over them. Water was break- 
ing over our bows. But the Morrissey didn’t 
seem to care a bit, and I think Cap’n Bob and 
Will really seemed to sort of like it. Cap’n 
Bob is a wonder and is most awfully nice to 
me. He seems to like having me work on 
the ropes and get into things as much as I 
can about the vessel. 

The lightning struck pretty near us once 
or twice and often the whole sky was bright 

ar 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


with forks of blinding lightning darting about 
wildly. 

We saw our first icebergs on the twenty- 
ninth, and from noon on passed about ten, four 
of them really big ones. One of them was 
about fifty feet high and a hundred feet long. 
An iceberg is about one eighth above water and 
seven eighths below. You can imagine how 
big the one I described must really be; and 
of course later we saw bergs much bigger. 
The smaller bergs and pieces of floating ice 
are called “‘growlers.”’ 

Just a week ago we had reports that the 
Straits of Belle Isle were frozen over from 
Labrador to Newfoundland, but the south 
wind of the last few days seemed to have 
pretty well cleaned them out, and we went 
through without any trouble. In the Straits 
we saw two steamers, which like ourselves 
were probably making the first passage of this 
season. 

After leaving the Straits we saw scattered 

22 


THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE 


bergs all day until about four o’clock when 
we ran into our first realice. There were lots 
and lots of pieces in a huge bunch about 
three miles by one mile. There were bergs 
as big as a good-sized house floating around 
by the hundreds. I went aloft with Ed Man- 
ley and looked around on the beautiful sight. 
The ice was blue on the top and a very pretty 
light green underneath. When up in the 
crow’s nest you can see the bottom of the 
bergs a way down. 

In the morning it was pretty foggy and we 
came close to some big bergs. Once when I. 
was on deck we saw a berg not a hundred 
yards away that looked like a small hotel, 
about a hundred and twenty feet high and 
three hundred feet long. 

For two days we were in the ice pretty 
nearly all the time. This was the Labrador 
Pack, Cap’n Bob said. One morning I woke 
up from a jolt when we hit a piece of ice. The 
bow of the boat goes out of the water and 

23 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


comes down with all its force and breaks up 
the ice; or else we sort of ride along on it a 
ways until it breaks loose. Anyway, it is 
nice to know that the Morrissey is built of 
good solid oak, and that there is that extra 
coating of greenheart sheathing around the 
outside to protect her somewhat from the 
ice. 

There was ice as far as we could see all 
day long, and some fog. Our course had been 
zigzagging in and out and around the ice, 
and it seems strange to come upon so much 
of it so suddenly when just the other day 
there wasn’t a bit. It is smooth water 
where there is a lot of ice, so we made pretty 
good time even with all our twisting about. 

One night we had quite a party, to make 
the time go well. With our little Pathex 
machine we had movies, and there was candy 
and our “foggy dew” orchestra played be- 
tween the reels, and Art Young played solos 
on his funny cut-down violin which he has 

24 


THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE 


taken to Africa and all over on his hunting 
trips. ‘‘Nanook of the North” was the pic- 
ture, and Bob Flaherty, who made it, is a 
great friend of ours and has told me lots about 
the life of the Eskimos up in the Hudson Bay 
country. By the way, Dad says that per- 
haps we will go up there next summer. 

It was quite sunny at times during the day 
and Dad and Mr. Kellerman took a great 
many pictures, both movies and stills. Mr. 
Kellerman would go out on the bowsprit and 
get down on the stays, taking movies of the 
prow cutting through the ice. 

It is very exciting to see how the crew take 
the boat through the ice. One man is in the 
crow’s nest, on the foremast. He calls out 
where to go and then the man at the wheel 
repeats his words so as not to make a mistake. 

You hear the man aloft yell, ‘‘Starbo-ard!”’ 

And then at the wheel the helmsman re- 
peats, ‘“‘Starbo-ard!”’ 

Then the boat swings over to port, because 

25 


ae? 
Pas 


of 
# 


Co 
DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


when the tiller is drawn by the wheel in one 
way the boat goes in the other. 
Altogether for me a pretty interesting and 


exciting First of July. The temperature was 


about 34, just a few degrees above freezing. 
And usually at this time of year I am swim- 
ming at home! 

One night Professor Hobbs of the University 
of Michigan gave us a lecture on the Green- 
land Ice Cap. He believes that many of the 
Atlantic storms start in Greenland. The 
country, as you probably know, is practically 
all ice. There is just a little strip of land 
around the shore, especially at the south, 
which is not covered with the Ice Cap. It 
is thought that this may be a mile or more 
thick, but nobody knows the exact measure- 
ment. The glaciers are tongues of the Ice 
Cap that kind of ooze out to the ocean and 
then break off into icebergs. There are about 
three hundred people in the part of Greenland 
where we are going, up North. The Green- 

26 








The Morrissey in Jones Sound. 








er 
q € 
. * » = 
: x 
aye 
v 4s 




















A Baffin Bay Portrait of the Author. 





THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE 


land Ice Cap and the Antarctic regions are 
supposed to be the coldest places in the world, 
even colder than the North Pole region. 
When Peary crossed the northern part of 
Greenland he found that when he climbed a 
hill of ice the wind was in his face; and when 
he went down a slope the wind was on his 
back. In other words, that there always 
seemed to be a wind coming down from the 
ice. Professor Hobbs and his party, whom 
we are taking to Holsteinsborg, will study 
these winds, the movements of the ice and 
other things. _ | 
- One time about our second day in the ice 
when we were winding in and out of the leads 
we saw a black something in the water. I 
yelled out to the others to come and see the 
seal. It was the first northern one I had seen 
outside of a zoo or circus. I happened to 
see this one because I was out on the end of 
the bowsprit, with Robert Peary, our chief 
engineer, with whom I play around a lot. 
27 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


He is the son of Admiral Peary who discovered 
the North Pole. This is his first trip North. 
He and I are great friends. 

You probably have heard of Eric the Red. 
He was a Norwegian who equipped a ship 
from Norway in the year 983 and set sail 
for a land that had been discovered by one 
Gunbjorn to the west of Iceland. When he 
got to this land he wondered how he could 
best get people to go there to live, so he called 
it Greenland. That was the real beginning 
of the present Greenland. After that cattle 
were brought and raised in the southern parts. 

Greenland is about fifteen hundred miles 
long from South to North and about six 
hundred miles wide at the widest place. 

We will pick up Knud Rasmussen at Disko 
Island where, I have read, lots of fossils have 
been found. I hope to get some for my 
collection. At home I have a small room 
which we call my museum, in which I am 
gathering together quite a lot of really in- 

28 


x 


THE STRAITS OF BELLE ISLE 


teresting things. Already I have a lot there 
brought back from the Arcturus expedition, 
and things given me by explorers and travel- 
lers who come to our house. One of my 
best treasures is a bunch of pieces of the shell 
of a dinosaur egg, given me by Roy Chapman 
Andrews, the man who first found these eggs 
in Asia. They are ten million years old. 


| 





29 





CHAPTER III 


WE REACH GREENLAND 


UR first sight of Greenland was on Mon- 
day, July fifth. It was very pretty with 
the great lofty mountain peaks sticking up out 
of the fog with snow on their tops. All after- 
noon we followed along the shore northward, 
and pretty well out. We had come a long 
way over from the other shore at the Straits 
of Belle Isle, and what with fog. and currents 
and the ice we had dodged through, it was 
hard to be sure exactly where we were. 

The next morning Captain Bartlett was 
worried because there was a strong breeze 
blowing and we did not know whether we had 
passed our port or not. We wanted to get 
in to Holsteinsborg. On account of the fog 

30 


WE REACH GREENLAND 


and mists he had not been able to take ob- 
servations. 

We kept a constant lookout with the 
glasses and about nine o’clock saw something 
like a big white flag being waved near some 
small huts on shore. Probably it was a dried 
seal skin or something like that. Anyway 
the Greenlanders were signalling us, and we 
stopped because we were very anxious to get 
someone on board and find out exactly where 
we were. — 

We put over a small boat, and Dad, Peary 
the engineer, the Mate and Carl went ashore 
and brought the first man back to the boat. 
Three kayaks came out to meet them. Carl 
spoke Norwegian to them and asked where 
Holsteinsborg was. He didn’t understand so 
we showed him a chart and named the place. 
He understood that and made motions that 
he would show us the way there. 

It was great fun to see him go up and down 
in the little kayak without tipping over. The 

31 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


kayak is the native Eskimo boat, a sort of 
little canoe made of seal skin stretched over a 
light frame of small wood. It is decked over 
all except for a hole, or sort of cockpit where 
the man gets in sticking his feet out forward 
out under the deck, where it is only about six 
inches deep. They have a kind of skin cover- 
ing that fits over the opening of the cockpit 
and ties up around their waist tightly so as 
to keep the water out entirely. The paddle 
is all one piece of wood, with a blade on each 
end. They use it holding it in the middle 
and dipping first one side and then the other. 
In South Greenland the paddle usually has 
bone on the end and is smooth in the handle. 
The northern Eskimo usually has no bone on 
the paddle, and has a couple of notches cut for 
each hand hold. 

Harry Raven drew pictures of Arctic ani- 
mals and the Eskimo gave us names for them 
in his language. 

We arrived in Holsteinsborg about four 

32 


WE REACH GREENLAND 


o'clock. It has a very good little harbor just 
inside the mouth of a fjord. A fjord is an 
indentation in the land, like a long narrow 
bay or sound, and usually the hills rise steeply 
on both sides. Dad says this Greenland 
scenery is very much like Norway. 

The houses are all different colors making a 
very gay sight. There was a little red 
church on top of the hill, and all around the 
bottom was the village, houses made mostly 
of wood with sods around them to keep the 
cold out. Some of the native sod houses had 
tunnels leading into them like the igloos of 
the North. 

The place where we landed was a little dock 
with a cannery on one side and a big sort of 
rack for kayaks belonging to the Eskimos on 
the other. 

I had great fun trading at Holsteinsborg. 
Three of the sailors, Jim, Joe and Ralph, and 
myself went on shore with some old shirts and 
one pair of old pants. We went into about 

33 


ad 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


a 


ten or fifteen of the huts. There were only 


about twenty-five huts in the town. They 


were one-roomed houses with a raised sort of 
platform for a bed in the back of the room. 
The cooking and everything was done in the 
same room. ‘The whole family sleep in one 


bed. The houses were very stuffy and smelt 


of skins and dogs. The dogs were all over 
the place, even lying in the tunnels so that 
you could hardly get through. 

At nine o’clock that night we left for a fjord 
called Ikortok, to drop Professor Hobbs and 
his party. We went inland aban forty miles. 
We tied three dories together making a raft 
to move his stuff in from the boat. One trip 
the raft was a little too heavily laden and 
almost went down when one of the dories 
partly filled up with water. 

While the last part of the dnloadiaan was 
going on, Dad, Carl and I went off to try 
the fishing, without any luck. On shore we 
saw a bird’s nest that looked as if it might be 

34 








se . , 
"pIaUIeD eamyotd UoHOP, Xoy}eq B OSM 0} MOF J9}SZuN0ZX puvyuseIy INOS & SMOYS IED 





WE REACH GREENLAND 


a good specimen. We tried to get at it, climb- 
_.. ing up a cliff, but couldn’t. 

When we went out from the land in our 
little boat we were in very shallow water. 
> The propeller of our Johnson engine hit the 

bottom and the little engine jumped loose 
and fell overboard. Luckily we were able 
_ to get it again. We rowed all the way back 
to the Morrissey, as the engine was full of salt 
water and couldn’t be made to run. The 
tide was coming in the fjord with great force 
and it was a hard row, about four miles. 
When we came to a beach we pulled the boat 
up and worked on the engine. I took our gun 
to try and get some birds for eating or for 
specimens. By the time I was up at the 
other end of the beach they had given up 
hope of drying the engine and started to row, 
calling out that I was to walk back along the 
shore as that would make the rowing easier. 
I didn’t like the idea much but I either had 
to walk or stay there. I had on native skin 

35 





J Sw 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


boots called kamiks which made it pretty 
hard to walk on rocks. I was afraid of dogs, 
too, because we had found a litter of dog pups 
on shore not far from where the Morrissey was 
anchored. Anda mother dog in the North is 
apt to be as fierce as a wolf when she has 
pups. I saw one a few hundred yards away 
so I sat down behind a rock and waited for 
him to move on. 

When I reached the shore near the boat they 
sent in a dory to take me off. 

The next day we stopped at some little vil- 
lages along the fjord. The Eskimos came out 
in small boats and kayaks, to trade with us 
and to see the white men and their strange 
schooner. They brought out a porpoise be- 
cause we asked for any fish they had, for 
specimens. 

That afternoon we arrived at a big bird 
rookery. It was a wonderful sight. The 
whole side of the cliff was covered with thou- 
sands of kittywakes nests. That is a sort of 

36 


WE REACH GREENLAND 


small gull which sometimes gets down to 
New York in the winter. The birds were 
making a terrible noise, chattering continu- | 
ously. 

We went up beside the cliff in dories and 
shot a few birds for specimens and others for 
eating. We took movies of the birds flying 
around the cliff. At a distance the flying 
birds, great clouds of them, looked like a 
blizzard. 

Then we started for Holsteinsborg to drop 
two men we had picked up there. We ar- 
rived at three o’clock in the morning and 
instead of having the Morrissey go in, we 
sent them in in the launch, as we wanted 
to go on to Disko as fast as we could. 








CHAPTER. IV 


ALONG THE GREENLAND COAST 


E hit bad weather going north to Disko 

and had to go in for shelter behind 

some small islands about forty miles from 

Holsteinsborg. There were no people there. 

We caught a few fish and shot some birds for 
specimens. 

On one island there were three deserted sod 
huts. They were all muddy and full of fish 
and seal bones. 

When we came back from the huts I went 
fishing with two of my friends, Jim and Ralph. 
We went away outside in the dory where it 
was quite rough—at least I thought so. We 
caught a few rock cod. Jim had a great big 
halibut right alongside but the fish gave a 

38 


ALONG THE GREENLAND COAST 


flip as he was trying to land him and got free 
from the hook just as he was hauling him over 
the gunwale. 

One night when some Eskimos came on 
board along the coast we showed them movies 
of Eskimos harpooning walrus to see how it 
would strike them. These movies were given 
in our little mid-ships cabin, where we eat 
and most of us sleep, with our Pathex projec- 
tor thrown on a small screen Fred made from 
the table oilcloth. 

When the harpooned walrus pulled the 
Eskimo hunter, our guests shouted and 
grunted. It was very funny. They had 
heard of movies but had never seen any. 
After the northern pictures we showed some 
from the South Sea islands. The Eskimos 
had never seen people in swimming so they 
didn’t know quite what to make of it. When 
they were asked by a friend of ours who 
speaks Eskimo what they thought of it, they 
only said that they liked them all very much, 

39 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


especially a picture showing lions playing 
with an animal trainer. They had never seen 
any animal like a lion. ‘There isn’t a cat, for 
instance, in all Greenland, we were told. 

It is great fun to see the boats come out 
and meet you and the Eskimos that are en- 
tirely different from us and can’t speak a 
word of English except for words like shirts 
or sugar or coffee that they have heard. For 
such things as these they want to trade boots 
and purses and skins. And in the ‘south 
they make little kayaks and knives and pen 
holders and such things out of the ivory of 
walrus tusks. 

They have some very nice hats made of fur 
and eiderdown. One man brought two little 
toy kayaks up to me with all the equipment 
on them, even the little rack to hold the har- 
pooning line, with a tiny model of a man sit- 
ting in the kayak. I got one of these for my 
little museum at home. For this one he 
wanted an old pair of pants, or some tobacco. 

40 


ALONG THE GREENLAND COAST 


Even the women want chewing tobacco. I 
got some very pretty purses made of seal 
flippers, with bone latches. It is hard to find 
trinkets for all of one’s friends at home. 

The Eskimos on the whole are very nice 
and honest. Most of them can play the 
accordion, and they seem to be very mus- 
ical and they certainly love to dance. 

We have lots of things on board for gifts 
and trading, especially to give in return for 
help and labor. Money isn’t much good up 
here. Our stores include axes, knives, beads, 
needles, tobacco, pipes, candy, etc. Both 
men and women love gay colored cloths and 
small mirrors always go well. 

At one of the villages we saw a lot of dogs 
eating a decayed shark. After the shark has 
been dead for a few weeks ammonia seems to 
form in the meat. The dogs love it and 
after eating it they seem to get sort of tipsy 
and can hardly walk. 

Fred Linekiller, the taxidermist, is showing 

41 


tee 
, s 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


me how to skin birds. It is very interest- 
ing to do it. The first thing to do when you 
shoot a bird is to put cotton in the wounds 
and in the mouth so the blood will not run out 
on the feathers. After that a needle is put 
through the nostrils and the beak is sewed 
together, so the cotton won’t come out. 
Then the feathers on the breast are parted and 
the skin cut from the breast bone down to 
the soft part of the stomach. 

Next cornmeal is poured in. It is used to 
keep the skin dry and to mop up the blood 
and moisture. After that is done instead of 
pulling the skin, it is pushed, so as not to 
stretch it. More cornmeal is added as the 
skin is pushed off. When the legs are reached 
they are cut at the knee joint so as to keep 
the bone to hold the foot in place. Just 
above where the tail feathers end is cut and 
the skin turned inside out and the skin pushed 
gently toward the head. It can be pushed 
as far up as a little beyond the eyes. Then 

42 


* 











Looking Down Over a Bird Rookery, 





Nils, David and Matak, Son of Pooadloona. 


aniep 
F 4 


me 


ALONG THE GREENLAND COAST 
a 


the head is scraped and a knife is put between 
the jaw bone and the back of the head open- 
ing up the head so that you get the brains out. 
Then the skin, inside out, is treated with 
arsenic powder, and after that it is put right 
side out again and the feathers fluffed out. 
Then it is ready to be taken back to the 
Museum to be stuffed and mounted, or stud- 
ied as it is. 

When I woke up one morning I found that 
we were in a little but very good harbor, 
Godhavn on Disko Island. Cap’n Bob has 
to be up most of the time, especially, of 
course, when we are moving about. This 
time, for instance, he was on deck all night, 
and Dad was with him. Disko isa hard place 
to get into unless you know it awfully well. 

There is a little coal mine near Godhavn. 
Getting the coal, and fishing, is about all they 
do, with some hunting especially in the win- 
ter. The women do most of the work and the 
men go fishing and hunting. When we went 

43 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


ashore we saw the women with big baskets of 
coal unloading a small boat and taking the 
coal to be weighed and stored away in a big 
storehouse. 

Carl, Mr. Streeter, Art Young and I went 
shark fishing with two Eskimos out in the 
mouth of the bay. We fished from about 
one until four o’clock but didn’t catch a 
thing. Later we traded some very nice little 
toy kayaks, all equipped, and also some 
little sledges with whips and rifles tied down 
with thongs. 

At Godhavn we went all around with the 
Governor, Carl acting as our interpreter. 
It is fine having him along as he speaks pretty 
good Danish. He is an American, but his 
people are both Norwegian and in his home 
out in Minnesota they talked Norwegian a 
lot, and it is pretty much the same as Danish. 

We went into the printing office where the 
only paper in Greenland is published. It is 
a monthly paper, and the printing house is a 

44 


ALONG THE GREENLAND COAST 


small red building with one little press. 
About three thousand papers in the Eskimo 
language go out free to practically all the 
people in Greenland. The Governor gave us 
a bound copy for our collection. Most of the 
stuff in the paper is written by Eskimos up 
and down the coast, who send it in. 

The next morning about six-thirty we 
heaved anchor and left Godhavn. When the 
anchor comes up all hands are called to the 
windlass which works with iron bars like pump 
handles. If there is a lot of chain out it 
takes a long time and is really hard work. 

In the afternoon Dad asked me to filla 
little bag with trading stuff because we were 
going to stop at a village called Proven. 
We reached there about seven. It was a very 
small harbor so the Morrissey could not go. 
in, and we used our launch and were greeted 
by the whole town at the little wharf. 

At the end of the dock were about eight 
sharks down in the water tied up with ropes 

45 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


and still alive. Later Harry Raven got one 
for a specimen that was ten feet long. Later 
he found the liver measured nearly six feet. 

While Dad and the others had tea with the 
Governor (all these little hamlets in the 
south have a Dane in charge whom we call a 
Governor, even though the average popula- 
tion may be only forty people) I went out to 
trade for some kamaks or skin boot. These 
are a sort of double high shoe or boot made 
of seal skin with the hair turned in and with 
a hairy inner boot beneath which is put in 
grass to make it soft and warmer. 

The Greenland hair seal is entirely different 
from the Alaskan fur seal. It has no fur but 
just coarse hair and has no value except for 
oil and its hide. I had a chance to get sev- 
eral pairs of kamaks but they were all only 
about half the size of my foot. The Eskimos 
are very small people and mostly the tallest 
only come up to about my shoulder. And 
naturally they have very small feet. 

46 


ALONG THE GREENLAND COAST 


At Proven I got two pairs of seal skin 
pants, one for a jacket and the other in ex- 
change for a box of candy and a sweater. I 
also got a kind of necklace which is worn by 
the women for ‘dress up,” for a piece of 
soap, a bar of chocolate and an army mirror, 
which was a good bargain, because the 
necklaces are hard to make and hard to 
get. 

We were going to get a kayak but it would 
be mean to take one because the Eskimos are 
like children and would give away almost 
anything for candy or pretty materials. The 
kayak is their main way of getting food, and 
is to them dreadfully important. We always 
tried not to take anything which was very 
necessary to the Eskimo, and to give them 
something really helpful in exchange for im- 
portant things. For instance, later when we 
got some kayaks, we gave in exchange lum- 
ber and materials from which they could make 
new ones. A very popular and useful thing 

47 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


we had for gifts was Tetley’s tea put up in half 
pound tins. This, often with a small bag or 
tin of sugar, was liked a lot everywhere, while 
we on board always drank it. 





48 


: fi Ni 


CHAPTER V 
UPERNIVIK AND THE DUCK ISLANDS 


E left Proven about midnight, and as 

we started out from the little harbor 

past some bare rocky islands Dad and some 

others went ashore to try some shooting. 

When we came in we had seen a great many 
birds and ducks flying around there. 

They stayed ashore from one o'clock until 
five, while I was asleep. Later Dad told me 
it was very beautiful, the water all grey and 
calm like silver, with a sky sort of lead color 
with gay tints of orange and yellow and lemon 
where the sun was low. They brought back 
tern, eider ducks and some gulls, some to 
eat, others to be skinned for specimens. 

The next day it was very foggy so we went 

49 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


slowly, dodging icebergs which we could see only 
when we got very close to them. At about 
nine the following morning we reached Uper- 
nivik, which is the last town that amounts to 
anything in North Greenland and is I think 
the furthest north town in the world. There 
is a Danish Governor there and a few other 
Danes. His name is Governor Otto and he 
was awfully nice to us, then and later on when ~ 
we came back. 

Upernivik is a nice little place built on an 
island. Where we landed there was only a 
little wharf and some store houses and sup- 
plies. From this harbor a little path or trail 
led over a steep hill to the real town, which 
was down on the other side on a slope to the 
south, with a grand view of Sanderson’s Hope, 
quite a big mountain a few miles away and 
overlooking an open fjord which was no use 
asa harbor. The village has a dozen wooden 
houses, including several that are very nice 
indeed, chiefly the Governor’s house and one 

50 


UPERNIVIK AND THE DUCK ISLANDS 


for the doctor who lives there, which also is 
used for a hospital. And about the wooden 
houses are the sod huts of the natives, most 
of whom seem to stick to their own style of 
living. There is a fine new church on the hill 
just over the village. 

We had lunch with Governor Otto and his 
daughter Ruth, a girl about twelve years old, 
at his house, and afterward in the harbor we 
took some movies of an Eskimo turning over 
in his kayak. He didn’t seem to have a 
hard time at all. He just kind of fell over 
on one side, sitting right in his kayak or 
skin boat, and then came up on the other side 
with just a twist of his paddle. Doing this he 
wore a watertight suit of sealskin and a hood 
over his head, drawn tight about the neck. 
And around his waist, where he sat in the hole 
or cockpit of the kayak, there was a skin fas- 
tened tight about him so that no water could 
get in. 

Robert Peary thought he would try it so 

51 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND © 


he changed into a sealskin shirt, got into the 
Eskimo’s kayak—it was hard for him to 
Squeeze in he was so much larger than the 
Eskimo—and turned half way over. The 
kayak was upside down and then his head 
stuck up on the other side and went down 
again, sputtering. He just couldn’t manage 
to get up again, and hung head down in the 
water, the boat upside down right over him. 
I really thought he was drowning. 

Then he came up a second time and yelled 
for help. Of course we were close to him and 
right away Carl got there in a rowboat and he 
pretty nearly fell in himself helping to get 
Robert straightened up. And you should 
have seen the Eskimos laugh! They thought 
it was a great joke. But Robert seemed to 
feel he had swallowed about all the ice water 
of Baffin Bay that he wanted and he was so 
cold he went back to the ship and changed 
his clothes. But I’ll bet that next summer at 
home in Maine he learns the trick. 

52 


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“Spuv]s] YONG oy} UO syde"D OUTYSY oY} Wor 33q YONG JOply uv soy sunox yy 





UPERNIVIK AND THE DUCK ISLANDS 


We had sent some natives out to catch 
sharks for specimens and Doc, Ralph and my- 
self went after them in the launch. They 
had caught four big ones and had lost an- 
other overboard. These Greenland basking 
shark, as they are called, are very slow and 
sluggish. They don’t fight at all. They 
move very slowly and don’t seem to be savage 
or a bit like the sharks I have seen caught in 
Florida. 

The next morning Governor Otto took us 
over to see his dogs, which during the summer 
he keeps on a bare rocky island about a mile — 
away, where they are entirely to themselves. 
About every three days during the summer 
they are fed, mostly ducks which are taken 
out in a big basket. Most of them seem to 
have been kept a pretty long time and become 
pretty ‘ripe.’ But the dogs certainly like them. 

We went over to the island in our launch 
with the Governor and a couple of Eskimos 
carrying the food. When they saw us com- 

53 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


ing the dogs, about a dozen in number, 
crowded down to the shore and followed along 
as we went by, yelping and barking crazily. 
They knew it was dinner time. 

We landed and decided to give them the 
birds up a bit from the water, where it was 
more level and Kellerman could get movies 
better. As the Eskimos carried up a big 
basket of the birds, one of them had to keep 
the dogs off the man with the basket. He 
used an oar and beat them. And at that 
they jumped up and tried to get at the bas- 
ket of meat on the man’s shoulder whenever 
they got the slightest chance. I don’t doubt 
they would have knocked him down if he 
had been alone. 

Then the birds were thrown out to the dogs, 
afew ata time. In a second they were torn 
to pieces and gobbled up. A dog will rip 
one up in a flash and choke down everything 
but the feathers. There were many fights. 
And all the time there was a great racket, 

54 


UPERNIVIK AND THE DUCK ISLANDS 


with the dogs howling and barking and yap- 
ping at each other. 

It was very interesting to see the King Dog. 
Each team up in this country has a head dog, 
the King, who is boss. He is usually the 
heaviest and best looking dog, and certainly 
is the best fighter. I believe he just fights 
his way up to the leadership. Certainly 
when he “‘says”’ anything to one of the others, 
they do what they are told pretty quickly. 
Or else they get a licking. 

The King has a queen, and it is fun to see 
the way he looks out for her. When the 
Queen got a duck or part of one, the King 
just sort of looked on and saw to it that no 
other dog interfered. If one of them got 
excited and started to move in on the Queen 
and her dinner, the King gave a growl—and 
that ended it. Or if another dog had a bit 
of duck, and the King came along, the other 
fellow just dropped what he had, perhaps 
running off or sort of turning over on his back 

95 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


and grovelling on the ground. There cer- 
tainly was discipline on that island. 

When it was all over there was just a few 
feathers scattered around on the rocks and 
- the dogs were mostly with bloody mouths 
and heads where they had torn up the meat. 
Anyway, they all seemed to have had a good 
meal and for the first time settled down 
quietly, to wait for the next dinner time three 
days later. In the winter they have their 
work, and lots of it, and of course they are 
awfully important in the life of the northern 
people. There are no horses and of course no 
automobiles or anything like that. So every- 
thing is drawn on sleds, and the sleds are 
moved by dogs. 

The dog skins are especially fine. The fur 
is heavy and soft and glossy. Dad bought 
some dog skins to have a coat made. 

That afternoon we left Upernivik to go 
north across Melville Bay. Everyone was 
on hand to see us off and the Governor fired 

56 











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Was; 


UPERNIVIK AND THE DUCK ISLANDS 


the little cannon up on the hill where they had 
the Danish flag hoisted. They gave us a 
salute of three guns and we answered with 
three shots from a rifle. 

The Duck Islands are a few little rocky 
islands a dozen miles or so off the mainland 
of Greenland just at the south side of Mel- 
ville Bay. About two o’clock the next after- 
noon we reached them, anchoring in a sort 
of harbor between the two largest islands. 
The bigger one is I suppose about two miles 
long and half a mile or so wide, very hilly 
and all rocks. About the shores, where 
there is a little level land, the rocks are cov- 
ered with moss and there are stretches of bog 
and mud. | 

We went around a good deal on both islands 
and saw a great many eider ducks which 
nest here in large quantities. In the old days 
when the whalers came into Baffin Bay this 
was a headquarters and then they used to 
gather duck eggs by the boat load. 

o7 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


We saw many ducks nesting. The nest is 
just a little fluffy round mass of the soft 
feathers, right on the ground. They pull the 
feathers out of their breasts, so that when 
you get the female ones they look as if some- 
one had plucked a handful of down from their 
undersides. This is what is called eider down, 
and is used in very fine mattresses and pillows. 
It is very warm and is also quite valuable. 
The Eskimos collect the eider down from the 
nests and from the birds, and it, with skins 
of foxes and seal, and a few other articles like 
walrus ivory and narwhal tusks, is one of 
the chief ways they have of trading with the 
outer world. 

The male and female eider ducks are very 
different. The female is all brown, while the 
male is brown only a little on his breast and 
belly, and with a lot of white on his back and 
neck, and feathers that are dark grey or nearly 
black. The female moves very slowly and is 
very tame and easy to get close to and to kill. 

; 538 


UPERNIVIK AND THE DUCK ISLANDS 


We got a good many for eating, and they are 
kept hung in the rigging to be used as Billy 
the cook wants them. The male is much 
wilder and flies faster and is pretty hard to 
shoot. There were very few male at Duck 
Island. While the females are nesting the 
males seem to go off by themselves. Later 
we saw a good many up in the fjords back of 
Upernivik. Both are very big and heavy 
birds, and awfully good eating. 

Back in 1850 and on for thirty years or so 
there was much whaling in these waters. 
Many of the ships came from Scotland. On 
the hill or small mountain at Duck Island 
there is a whaler’s cairn, and also a walled-in 
place where they had their lookout. In 
that cairn, by the way, in 1888 Peary left a 
record. We could find nothing. Probably 
the Eskimos had cleaned out everything 
long ago. : 

In one piece of lowland near the water, 
where there was a little dirt, we found the 

oo 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


graves of some whalers. They were cov- 
ered over with stones and only one head board 
with a name, was left. It said: “In memory 
of William Stewart, A.B., S. S. Triune of 
Dundee, June 11, 1886. Aged 24.” 

Art took me shooting with my sixteen-gauge 
shotgun, but I didn’t do so well. I haven't 
tried shooting on the wing much and I’m 
pretty bad at it. Shooting with the twenty- 
two rifle seems easier. Art himself is a grand 
shot, with either rifle or shotgun. 

We found many eggs, and Dad and some of 
the others, on the other island, found great 
caches of eggs, hundreds of them evidently 
gathered by Eskimos who had visited the 
islands earlier in the season and left them 
there to get them later. They were put 
away in a sort of hole with rocks piled up — 
around and over them so that they were 
perfectly protected, and with the chinks of the 
rock packed up with moss. They also found 
the skull of a polar bear. 

60 


UPERNIVIK AND THE DUCK ISLANDS 


We found three eggs with little ducks just 
hatching out. These we brought back to 
the boat. I put one under a mother duck 
which I had found alive in an Eskimo trap and 
the other two behind the galley stove where it 
was nice and hot. Two of them lived quite a 
while and then they were killed, painlessly, 
and put away for specimens. We got some 
nests for the Museum and I got one for my 
own collection. 


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61 













jet 


CHAPTER VI 
ACROSS MELVILLE BAY 


Y the twentieth of July we were pretty 
nearly across Melville Bay. That was 
just exactly a month from the time we started 
from home which is most awfully good time. 
Of course we were very lucky for all the way 
we had practically no real trouble with ice. 
Melville Bay usually is about the most 
dangerous and hardest place in the north. 
Lots of years it may take weeks to make the 
passage, and sometimes there just isn’t any 
way to get by it. Later Dr. Rasmussen told 
me that he has been drifting, frozen in the 
pack ice, for six weeks solid while trying to 
get through to the north, and in mid-summer 
at that. 
62 


ACROSS MELVILLE BAY 


After we left Duck Island I put in quite 
some time getting our things ready for trad- 
ing and for presents. Of course we weren’t 
going to do any real trading, except for little 
personal things some of us wanted. Most of 
the stuff was to give natives who helped us in 
the hunting and collecting of specimens. 
One of my nice jobs was filling a lot of tin cans 
with screw tops with candy and sugar. And 
we also sorted out some gay sweaters and 
jerseys which Mr. Alex Taylor, who lives at 
Rye, had given the expedition. (All our 
crew, by the way, now have Alex Taylor 
sweaters and they certainly came in handy.) 

We arrived at Cape York on the night of 
July 20th. Cape York is a big cape which 
marks the northern end of Melville Bay and 
really is the beginning of far North Green- 
land. ‘The people living there and in the few 
settlements further north are the Smith Sound 
tribe of Eskimos, who live nearer the North 
Pole than any other people. About at this 

63 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


latitude is further north than the most north- 
erly points of the mainland of any of the con- 
tinents, North America, Europe, or Asia. 5So 
we felt we really were beginaing to get pretty 
far north. 

The Cape itself is a high mountain which 
sort of spills right down into the sea. The 
slopes, some of them, are quite red, and the 
snow is all colored crimson too, from a sort 
of dust which seems to cover it. This part 
is called the Crimson Cliffs, and they have 
been seen and described by about every 
Arctic expedition. In behind the cape is a 
great glacier which breaks off right into the 
water very conveniently. Cap’n Bob put the 
Morrissey right up alongside the ice wall and 
men jumped down on the glacier from the 
bowsprit and carried lines and fastened the 
ship so she lay right alongside, as if the ice 
were a wharf. Of course there was no wind 
and the water was quiet. 

Then they took a hose and ran it up a way 

64 


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ACROSS MELVILLE BAY 


and put one end in one of the many streams 
which were running down the top of the gla- 
cier, melted snow water. There was enough 
slope to carry the water into our big tank on 
deck. Also the sailors filled the barrels, 
using buckets. It was a great way to get a 
full load of real ice water. 

While we were working in the Eskimos came 
off in their kayaks. We bought a fine kayak 
for a rifle and some ammunition. The very 
next day, when we were ashore, we found that 
the owner of the traded kayak already had a 
new one well started. I suppose in a few 
days more he was all fixed up with a boat 
again. And with his really fine rifle he ought 
to do most awfully well hunting. I certainly 
hope so. A kayak to an Eskimo is about the 
most important thing in life. I imagine a 
rifle would come next. Compared to an 
automobile with us, our auto is only a luxury 
which we really could get along without. 

About a mile from the little settlement of 

65 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


Cape York there is a ‘bird mountain.” 
That’s what they call the places where they 
find the dovkies, or little auks. These are 
small birds which live on mountain sides 
where there are talus slopes—that is, big 
slides of loose rocks all piled up. They make 
their nests down in the holes and cracks and 
they are very hard to find. 

An Eskimo went with us in the launch 
around to this bird mountain. We climbed 
up the slope to a regular place they use where 
there was a sort of rough blind made out of 
the loose stones. He carried a net with a 
long handle. We sat down on the slope, 
partly hidden by the blind. Then the birds 
would fly past, always in the same direction. 
They seemed to be always on the move, get- 
ting up off the rocks and swinging around in 
a great circle out over the sea and back again. 
There were thousands of them. 

As a bird would fly past us, almost near 
enough to touch sometimes, the Eskimo 

66 


ACROSS MELVILLE BAY 


would make a quick swoop with the net, and 
plop a dovkie would be in it. Then he would 
quickly pull in the net, take the bird out, kill 
it and be ready for another. This is chiefly 
the work for women who are awfully good at 
it and catch hundreds and I guess thousands. 
They are fine eating, and the skins are used 
for making bird feather clothing, as lining to 
wear next the skin. 

After our Eskimo friend Kaweah had 
showed us how to do it, I tried. It looked 
awiully easy. But it wasn’t. I made a lot 
of misses. 

Dad and Dan Streeter were looking on and 
taking pictures, and they laughed as I swiped 
at the birds and missed them. 

“Three strikes and out!’ they’d call when 
I scored three misses. 

But after a while I did catch a few, and 
_some I just hit with the net pole and knocked 
them down, sort of stunned, when we got 
them. Dad and Dan also tried, but they 

67 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


didn’t break any records. A fellow with a 
batting eye like Babe Ruth ought to do pretty 
well at this game. Anyway, it was great 
fun, and was of course the first time I ever 
caught birds with a net. Funnily, almost the 
next day I actually did catch some others 
with a loop on a string. 

Where the vessel lay that afternoon was 
right next a big lot of bay ice, pans of ice with 
some water between them. In the distance 
here and there we could see seal. They sit 
up in the sun, but almost always right near a 
hole in the ice. And the minute they get 
frightened they slide off and are gone. Even 
if you shoot them, unless death is very quick, 
they are likely to flop off into the water, 
where they sink. 

Dan and one of the Eskimos tried some 
stalking, crawling up on the seal or pooeesee 
as the Eskimos call them. And he had pretty 
good luck, hitting three, two of which they 


got. They also got pretty wet crawling over 
68 


ACROSS MELVILLE BAY 


the ice and through pools of water melted 
by the sun. Anyway, it was our first game. 
The seal meat was fine, too. 

The next morning we had moved northward 
to Parker Snow Bay. We were anchored 
there when I woke up. It’s a beautiful 
place, a little bay right on the coast, with a 
bit of flat land with a glacier coming right 
down behind it and stretching up to the great 
ice cap. Two steep fine mountains are on 
either side of the glacier, and one of them we 
named Bartlett Peak. Along the shore one 
of these mountains has steep cliffs which fall 
right down into the water. And there is a 
great bird rookery, or loomery as the New- 
foundland folks call it. 

On the shore we saw a blue fox. And then 
after breakfast we went to work at the rook- 
ery to get specimens. It was a beautiful 
calm sunny day and we really had a grand 
time. Some of us were at it until afternoon 
and sent back a dory to bring us some lunch. 

69 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


We climbed up a cliff, getting at it on the 
easier side of a steep little point. From there 
we could reach right down to some of the 
nests. We could even touch some of the 
birds, both auks and kittywakes. They were 
sitting on the nests, either with eggs or very 
young birds. (Three weeks later when we 
came back there were many more young 
ones.) 

It was here that I used a light line to catch 
several birds. I made a slip noose in the end 
and let it a few feet over the edge of the cliff 
so that it rested on a nest. Then when the 
bird came back, if she settled down right, I 
pulled the noose suddenly. It worked quite 
well. 

Bob Peary, who is very handy at getting 
around and climbing, put a rope around him- 
self and we let him down over the cliff to get 
eggs and nests. Art Young and Carl were 
the “‘anchors’’ on the other end of the rope. 
Once on his way down in one place Bob 

70 


ACROSS MELVILLE BAY 


stepped on a loose rock and knocked it out. 
When it fell it started a big bunch and they 
all went tumbling down into the water with a 
great splash and crash. 

The cliff was right straight up and down, 
with a sort of shelf sticking out perhaps 
twenty feet from the water. After a while 
Bob went down there, where he could stand 
and then Dad was let down with a small 
movie camera to get some pictures. Later 
the launch went around below them, and while 
the men at the very top held the line tight, the 
men in the launch held it tight at the bottom 
and first Dad and then Robert slid down it 
into the boat, after first letting down the 
bucket with eggs and a box of nests and some 
little ones they had gathered up. 


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71 





CHAPTER VII 


SHIPWRECK 


N Monday July twenty-sixth we struck a 
hidden rock off Northumberland Island 
which is at the mouth of Whale Sound away 
up at Latitude 77 degrees and twenty minutes 
north, on the east side of Baffin Bay. We 
were cruising around the island trying to lo- 
cate some Eskimo whom we wanted to get on 
board to help us hunt. We were just getting 
into the good game territory. The evening 
before we saw seventeen walrus from the 
deck. 

Captain Bob had been told back at Cape 
York that certain Eskimo were at places where 
they usually lived, but when we got in sight 
of them the tupiks were deserted. These 

72 


SHIPWRECK 


people move about a lot following up where 
the hunting is best, and probably the fact that 
the ice had gone out of the fjords and bays 
unusually early had made them change about 
unexpectedly. 

Anyway, we were pretty close in shore, ex- 
amining four sod houses on a point. A big 
wall of rock stuck out of the mountain behind, 
coming down toward the water. It is what 
geologists call a “‘dyke’’—harder rock which 
stands up under the rain and snow, like a 
wall, with the softer stuff sloping down from 
it on either side, sort of washed away. 

Well, this ‘“‘dyke”’ evidently stuck well out 
underneath the surface of the water. After- 
ward we found there was deep water on both 
sides of it, right close up. But we managed 
to hit the very outer knob of it, about ten feet 
or so below the surface. 

It was about twelve thirty in the morning 
when we hit, broad daylight of course, with 
the sun shining brightly and fortunately no 

73 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


wind or sea running. It was very, very ex- 
citing. I was almost thrown out of my bunk 
when we hit. There was a jar and a jolt and 
then everything stopped. We had often hit 
into light ice, which jarred the vessel a bit, 
but never anything like this. 

As quick as I could I put on my pants and 
was just getting on my stockings when Dad 
called down from the skylight for all hands to ~ 
get on deck and never mind dressing. I woke 
up Bob Peary and Doc and we all rushed on 
deck. 

We moved oil casks for half an hour from 
the after part of the ship to the bow so as to 
take the strain off the stern where the vessel 
had struck and was sticking on the rocks. It 
was just high tide when we hit. We raised the 
foresail, jib and jumbo and had the engine go- 
ing full speed, but she didn’t budge. Then, 
as the tide began to leave us, we took a lot of 
stores ashore in our dories and started in to 
do what we could for the next tide. 

74 





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SHIPWRECK 


The Morrissey was listing on her port side — 
at an angle of forty-five degrees or worse, and 
everything was in a dreadful mess on board. 
You just couldn’t stand even on the dry deck — 
and where it was slimy with oil, as most of it 
was, the only possible way to get around was 
to hang onto arope. And at that, what with 
moving around the heavy oil drums there were 
plenty of bad spills. Cap’n Bob cut his hand 
badly and Doc bandaged it up right away. 
Down in the cabins everything was in a heap. 
It was funny to see the clothes hanging on 
hooks from the ceiling stand right out crazily 
at a wild angle from the walls, like drunken 
men. 

The tide went down leaving the vessel high 
and dry, except for the bow which was in the 
water, tipped down at a bad angle and the 
stern up on the rocks. Cap’n Bob lashed ten 
empty oil drums on either side close to the keel 
at the stern, to help raise her when the water 
came in. 

79 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


We just had to be ready for any emergency 
in case the Morrissey proved to be hurt so 
badly she couldn’t float, or especially if a 
storm came up which would have broken her 
to pieces quickly and made landing stuff very 
hard and perhaps impossible. And you must 
remember we were nearly one thousand miles 
from the nearest Danish settlement and more 
than 2000 miles from Sidney, the nearest big 
place. 

One thing we put ashore at once and very 
carefully was the emergency low power radio 
set with which Ed Manley, our radio operator, 
could keep in touch with the world in case our 
big outfit on board was lost. That little set 
which might have been so awfully important 
was given us by the National Carbon Com- 
pany who make the Eveready batteries. 

And then the noon tide came and we were 
dreadfully disappointed. For the water didn’t 
rise to within about three feet of the midnight 
tide when we struck, so we were left with no 

76 


SHIPWRECK 


hope of getting off until the next tide. And 
that was pretty bad, because all that listing 
and pounding was dreadfully hard on a vessel, 
and would surely break one up less strong 
than the good old Morrissey, which is built of 
oak and is unusually sturdy. 

But the water did get high enough to wash 
in over the deck on the low port side, even if 
the vessel couldn’t raise. There was a bad 
leak strained in her side and she leaked so 
badly we all had to help bail with pails lowered 
with ropes through the skylight into the mid- 
ships cabin. We couldn’t use the pumps be- 
cause she had such a bad list, and tip forward, 
that they didn’t get at the water. 

My bunk and two others filled up with 
water all mixed with oil, and my things, es- 
pecially in the locker underneath, got pretty 
well spoiled. Luckily someone lifted out my 
bedclothes. 

The stove in the galley and in the after 
cabin had to be put out, as there was danger 

77 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


they would spill over and set the ship on fire. 
The big galley stove was braced up with seal 
hooks to keep it from sliding. Billy the cook 
moved in to shore and kept making coffee there 
so the men had something hot to help keep 
them going. Before it was all over most 
everyone had been working continuously more 
than forty hours. I was at it more than 
twenty-five, and was pretty dead tired. 

The Captain ordered all the food put ashore 
and there was a lot more to do, lashing more 
casks and trimming the cargo and moving 
gasolene to land, for the motor boat in case we 
got stuck, and kerosene for the primus stoves. 
Then, too, they put out the big heavy anchor, 
taking it in the dories quite a way from the 
ship and dropping it, so that we could haul on 
it with the windlass. 

While the tide was down there was a lot of 
work to do on the banged-up bottom of the 
vessel. The false keel, which is a big timber 
on the very bottom below the real keel, was 

78 


SHIPWRECK 


pretty well ripped off aft of the mainmast, 
and a lot of oakum was loosened out of the 
garboard seam. Lying down on the wet rocks 
we filled in a lot of oakum, which is a sort of 
fibre like shredded bagging or say potato sack- 
ing, with caulking tools, which is a blunt kind 
of chisel and a mallet or hammer to pound the 
stuff into the seams or cracks. 

Then we got a lot of Billy’s dish washing 
soft soap and mashed it up with a hammer 
and worked it in our hands into a kind of pasty 
putty. We put this in on top of the oakum. 
We worked in the water until the tide got up 
around our boots, and then climbed the ladder 
up on deck. I was able to help quite a bit 
on this job, and afterward there was plenty to 
do bailing. 

On shore we put up one of our small tents 
and took in most of our things, like sleeping 
bags, blankets, guns and ammunition. Every- 
body as best they could threw their things 
together to land. It was exciting, and ex- 

79 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


actly as if we were abandoning the ship. And 
awfully sad, too, to see our fine Morrissey all 
soaked with water and oil, and everything 
thrown about so terribly. 

After the unloading work, and after the 
men had had a mug of coffee and hardtack 
and whatever Billy could dig out of the cans, 
it was pretty nearly high tide again, along 
about eleven o’clock at night. The sun, of 
course, was always about the same distance 
above the horizon, only at a different point, so 
it seemed always a sort of bright afternoon. 
We were terribly lucky not to have it stormy. 

All hands were called on board and while 
three men worked the pumps the others 
manned the windlass. We had the big anchor 
and a small one out, to pull on with the wind- 
lass. 

There was a good wind coming up so we had 
to get her off then or she would surely break 
up and leave us there. After working for an 
hour or so we were just about to give up when 

80 


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SHIPWRECK 


the wind freshened more. Cap’n Bob ordered 
all sails hoisted. Everyone got on the hal- 
yards and pulled as hard as they could. The 
wind flattened out the sails and the engine 
went full speed ahead. But for a good many 
minutes she held fast and we were mpst aw- 
fully discouraged. 

Then all at once there was an extra big 
wave and a puff of wind, and suddenly she 
gave a sort of groan and slid free of the rocks. 
After twenty-five hours we were off! We 
sure were glad. 


Dad, Carl and myself went ashore to get ihe 


stores in order in case it rained, while the 
Morrissey was taken around to leeward some 
place where they could care for her better 
and see how things were. She seemed to be 
leaking a lot, and the plan was, in case of the 
water getting away from the pumps, to beach 
her. 

We turned in right away, at about half- 
past two, I suppose. And when we woke up 

8I 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


it was two in the afternoon! We were pretty 
tired, I reckon. And then, too, Carl had been 
quite sick and had had a pretty hard time to 
keep going at all. 

The Morrissey had disappeared. Of course 
we didn’t have any idea where she was, but 
there was nothing to do but wait and fix things 
up as best we could. The next day, in the fog 
Carl and Dad went out in the motor launch 
to try to locate the crowd, but they did not 
find the vessel. 3 

So we built a sort of house, the craziest 
house you ever thought of. Robinson Crusoe 
never saw a funnier one. It had three walls, 
all made of food, mostly, with a big sail pulled 
over for a roof and some tarps to help out. 
The strongest wall, where the wind blew from, 
was built of flour sacks laid up on boxes of 
tinned vegetables. There were bags of po- 
tatoes, crates of onions, barrels, dunnage bags, 
hams and bacons in those walls. Anyway, 
we felt we had plenty to eat for quite a time. 

82 


SHIPWRECK 


We were especially glad to have a fine lot of 
specially made Armour pemmican, presented 
by Dad’s friend, Herman Nichols. 

We had two big bear skins and these we 
put on the damp ground with a tarp for a sort 
of floor. With a primus stove, which works 
with kerosene, we were quite comfortable 
even though the wind did blow the sails 
nearly off the roof. We weighted them down 
with big rocks, and tied heavy hams that Mr. 
Swift had given us by ropes at the sides. 

I got quite sick and had to keep in my sleep- 
ing bag about the whole time we were at 
“Shipwreck Camp.” It was pretty cold with 
no fire at all to give heat, but we got along 
first rate. Dad explained that by that time 
almost surely word would have gotten through 
from our wireless that the vessel was off the 
rocks. The trouble was that the water, at 
the time of the accident, put our wireless out 
of commission. It took Ed Manley a couple 
of days to get it going right again. 

83 


9 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


The third day about noon, when Carl was 
cooking up some tea on the primus, he glanced 
out of the door of our hut and saw four Eski- 
mos coming toward us a long way off on the 
side of the mountain. As they got nearer we 
could see they all were carrying big packs. 

When they got to the tent the man threw 
off a little baby he had been carrying in a 
sling on his back. The mother had a bag 
of empty cans in her sack, which we recog- 
nized as coming from the Morrissey. With 
the few words we could understand, and a 
lot of motions and grinning—they are always 
awiully good-natured and nice—our friends 
told us they kad been aboard the vessel and 
had been helping pump. She was at anchor 
on the other side of the island. It seemed 
she was only a few miles away. 

So after we had given them a feed, mostly 
a big can of peas which they loved, Carl and 
Dad started to find the ship, leaving me to 
sleep. I forgot to say that we gave the Eski- 

84 


SHIPWRECK 


mo some ham, which looked good and they 
showed us they would like a taste. But they 
did not like it at all. It wastoosalty. They 
use no salt in their meat, and can’t understand 
us liking it. ‘‘ Nagga piook”’ they said, mak- 
ing funny faces. Which means, ‘‘No good.” 

About midnight, eight hours or so later, I 
heard a yell and woke up to see the Morrissey 
out in the bay beyond where she had run 
aground. Dad and Carl were on board, and 
as the wind had gone down they had come 
around to get the stores. 

I was sent aboard and Doc told me to go 
right to bed and keep as warm as possible. 
As my bunk was still pretty damp where it 
had been drowned out, I turned in to Dad’s 
bunk in the aft cabin, where the fire was 
going. 

When I woke up we were under way and 
headed south. We planned to go back to 
Upernivik and beach the vessel there and 
make repairs. With so many on board it 

85 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


seemed better to Cap’n Bob and Dad not to 
risk trying to make any repairs on the north 
side of Melville Bay, which is apt to be a very 
dangerous place to cross. 

If the Morrissey had struck on a rising tide 
everything would have been all right. One 
often goes aground up here where hundreds 
of rocks and reefs aren’t shown on the charts 
and where all the information for sailors is 
terribly incomplete. But of course things 
like that always happen at the wrong time, 
It was just hard luck. When the wind came 
up it was either break up or get off. 

I have written this in the after cabin as we 
cross Melville Bay going down to Upernivik. 
The boat has been in a terrible mess, but is 
pretty well straightened out now. And every- 
one has about caught up on sleep. 

Around my bunk and Mr. Kellerman’s the 
boards are crushed in. That’s from the great 
strain put on the frame and beams when the 
boat laid on her side, so that when she moved 

86 


SHIPWRECK 


or gave a little the light inner framework of the 
bunks snapped. 

Dad just asked me if I’d like to go again 
on another northern trip. And of course I 
said I would. Really my answer was “I’d 
like to go anywhere with Cap’n Bob.” 





87 





CHAPTER VIII 


THE MORRISSEY REPAIRED 


N Tuesday the third of August we ar- 

rived in Upernivik again, with Melville 
Bay safely behind us. And we knew that our 
trip would have to end right there as we could 
not fix the leaks in the Morrissey. Coming 
down she had been leaking about ten gallons 
a minute. That in itself wasn’t so bad, but 
the danger was that at any minute it might 
get worse, especially if any strain came or we 
hit ice or anything else. 

It was my turn at the pumps when we came 
in. When the engine was not running we had 
to pump almost continually, for the engine 
itself used up water from the bilge in its cool- 
ing system with a rig Robert Peary fixed up, 
which helped the pumping a lot. 

88 


THE MORRISSEY REPAIRED 


At once we got some Eskimos on board to 
do the pumping. Cap’n Bob went ashore to 
see how. deep the water was on the beach 
and what the slope was, to see if he could 
beach the Morrissey. Later in the afternoon 
the Governor and his assistants told us that 
there was a place about ten English miles 
(the Danish mile is about four of ours) up a 
_ fjord from Upernivik where the vessel could be 
beached easily. It was a place they used for 
their own vessels to get at their bottoms. 

We left right away and it took about two 
hours and a half to get there. On the way 
over we went through a kind of natural gate 
in the rocks that seemed about as wide as the 
length of the ship. It was very, very deep 
because there was a mountain on either side 
with sheer cliffs going straight down for prob- 
ably a great many fathoms. 

They anchored the boat to wait for a big 
tide while Cap’n Bob got things ready to try 
and get her out so work could be done on the 

89 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


bottom. The trouble was that the damage 
was on the very bottom of the keel so that just 
to keel her over on her side did no good. From 
Upernivik Dad had arranged to take up with 
us a dozen Greenlanders to help with the 
heavy work, like shifting ballast. Also we 
borrowed from the Governor his blacksmith 
and some tools. 

The next day some of us took the Governor 
back to Upernivik in our launch. Doctor 
Heinbecker and I stayed there, visiting Dr. 
Rasmussen, the woman doctor who lives there 
and visits all around at the little settlements. 
She makes these trips in her own little power 
boat, with a couple of Eskimos to run it for 
her. She is a Dane, and most awfully nice. 
she is very big and strong, and they tell grand 
stories about how she drives her dog team in 
the winter and can tire out men who try to 
keep up to her. All the time we were at 
Upernivik she let us sleep in comfortable beds 
in her little hospital, and in every way treated 

90 


oe 
Ponca OO 





‘soTyoaod SUION 18 PULH SIP Soy ped 





THE MORRISSEY REPAIRED 


us splendidly. While visiting there we had 
some interesting things to eat, like seal meat, 
auks, duck and ducks’ eggs. 

That afternoon Dr. Rasmussen got a mes- 
sage that someone was sick in a little village 
called Aupilagtok, only a few miles from where 
the Morrissey was. The others returned to 
the Morrissey and Doc and I went with the 
Lady Doctor to this village, asking that they 
send over there to get us. We went in her 
little boat which was built in Denmark. It is 
very sturdy and good in the ice, ploughing 
along just as if there was no ice at all. 

In Augpilagtok there was a tiny store in a 
little room joined to the house of the head 
man. His name was Imik and later he went 
with Dad on a three days trip, to the glaciers 
and the ice cap. In the store they sold lead 
for the bullets which they made in crude 
moulds, and also caps and powder. Their 
rifles shoot both shotgun shells and rifle bul- 
lets, and they make all the ammunition them- 

gI 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


selves. Here the Eskimos have money which 
they use in the store to buy biscuit, sugar, 
tobacco and other things. These are weighed 
out on funny little scales the weights of which 
were two old brass hinges. 

After a while our launch came with Dad 
and some of the others and we all went back 
to the Morrissey, through lots of ice. Most 
of the way the Lady Doctor’s boat, the Mitik, 
which is very broad in the beam, ploughed 
through the ice in front, with our launch trail- 
ing along behind. 

When we arrived at the Morrissey the Cap- 
tain wanted to get rid of some of us, to make 
things easier for Billy, the cook, who had the 
big bunch of Eskimos on his hands. Also, 
they were moving ballast and getting ready 
to put the vessel over on her side which would 
mean putting out the fires and having every- 
one camp on shore. The Lady Doctor in- 
vited our Doc, Harry Raven and myself to 
go to town with her, which we did. 

92 


THE MORRISSEY REPAIRED 


We went back to Upernivik in the Lady 
Doctor’s boat, reaching there about four 
o'clock in the morning—broad daylight, of 
course, and with the sun shining brightly, for 
all this time we were very lucky to have fine 
weather and really quite warm. I suppose 
the temperature was about sixty at the warm- 
est and never got below forty. 

During lunch, at two o'clock that afternoon 
we heard another great yelling from the na- 
tives. 

‘““Umiaksoah!”’ they yelled. That is the 
word for ship. (I have spelled it the way it 
sounds to me.) 

To our great surprise we saw a battleship 
coming into the harbor. It proved to be the 
Islands Falk, meaning the Iceland Falcon, 
the Danish patrol ship. It had heard by 
radio of our trouble while it was away down 
in south Greenland and at once had started 
north to rescue us. The first report, relayed 
to them by radio from an American vessel in 

93 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


the north, said we had entirely lost the Mor- 
rissey and were all on shore. Just why such 
a report was sent we could not imagine, as of 
course we had sent out no word ot that kind. 

Anyway, later on Captain West of the 
Falcon got another word from the Canadian 
ship Boethic which was over on the Canadian 
side. The Boethic had had wireless word with 
us, and told Captain West the real facts, 
which were that we were working south to 
Upernivik to make repairs. So the Falcon 
came to Upernivik to help us. 

I got a small boat and rowed out to the 
battleship and went aboard. To my great 
surprise I was greeted by Dr. Knud Rasmus- 
sen who had come up on the Falcon from Disko 
where we had been supposed to meet him. 
But his ship from Denmark had been very 
late and he failed to connect with us there. 
I told him about what had happened to us. 

Then Captain West, Commander Riis- 
Carstensen, Dr. Rasmussen and others went 

94 


THE MORRISSEY REPAIRED 


up to the Morrissey to offer help. In the end 
they sent a fine lot of men up there with a diver 
and boats and everything. The diver worked 
for about six days, while the Danish officers 
and sailors lived aboard and camped ashore. 
It proved that with the diver it was possible 
to get the leaks just about stopped. But I 
think that without him we would have had 
pretty serious trouble. The hard part was to 
get at the damaged place, which was on the 
very bottom of the vessel. And at the beach- 
ing place where they sent us it turned out 
there was not enough tide to get the bottom 
clear out of water. 

We certainly were very grateful to the Dan- 
ish officials for all they did for us. No one 
could possibly have been nicer or more gen- 
erous. And I never saw a finer lot of men. 
It was great fun for me to be with them on the 
ship and around town. Most of the sixty 
men aboard were from all over Denmark, fine 
younger inen who were doing their one year 

o5 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


of compulsory naval service. In Denmark 
every man has to serve in the army or navy 
or about a year of training. And I think 
they all love to get on this Greenland trip, 
it is so different. 

While they were working on the boat we 
moved into Upernivik, Doc, Harry and I. 
Dad took three men up to the glacier, where 
they got pictures and collected some bird 
specimens. 

It was a very gay time for Upernivik, prob- 
ably about the most exciting they ever had. 
For not only was the Morrissey there but also 
the Falcon with a crew of sixty, most of 
whom were ashore much of the time. There 
was a dance in a big warehouse near the 
wharf every night, which always lasted until 
morning. In fact, there just wasn’t any night. 
In the summer when a boat comes to those 
far away towns, they forget all about sleeping. 
Everyone stays up all the time. For the 
people in the boats it really is pretty hard, for 

96 


“I9TB[D OY} JO JOON at} 3e SuruTUMMS AIT Wy pue [VD 





"89S 94} 0} UMOG Seut0D deg adj eaIH oY} s1ayM ‘IaINeTN oy} uo dQ 





THE MORRISSEY REPAIRED 


the people ashore at least can go to sleep when 
the boat leaves, while it is just then that the 
work starts for the travellers. 

At Upernivik is the farthest north church in 
the world, they told me. A new building had 
just been completed, and on the Sunday we 
_ were there it was opened. There was a great 
crowd, and the Governor wore his high hat 
and everything. Of course we all went, and 
to the native wedding that afternoon. The 
hymns were sung in Eskimo, and there was a 
long Eskimo sermon. The first church in 
Upernivik was built away back in 1780. 

On the evening of August tenth the Mor- 
rissey came back to the harbor. The diver 
had fixed her up finely. Captain West gave 
Captain Bartlett a letter saying she was quite 
seaworthy. So we were very happy, as it 
meant we could keep on with our trip, which 
had come so near to ending in disaster. And 
we decided to go north again, taking Knud 
Rasmussen to Thule. 

97 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


The night before we left they gave us a 
grand party at Governor Otto’s. All the shut- 
ters were closed so the house would be dark. 
Then, to make it pretty, they lit many candles. 
Eighteen people crowded into the little din- 
ing-room, and there were speeches and quite 
a fine celebration. I went to bed pretty early 
but the older people, I think, did not turn 
in until seven in the morning. 

On the Iceland Falcon, the last night, there 
was another farewell party, Cap’n Bob and 
Dad dining with Captain West. They loaded 
on the Morrissey the stores of Dr. Rasmussen 
and his baggage. He was going back with us 
all the way to New York, so he had a good 
deal of clothes and the like. 

As we up-anchored and got under way we 
dipped our flag and fired our biggest rifle 
three times in salute. Then the Falcon an- 
swered with three shots from one of her big 
guns, and the people on shore fired another 
salute with their small cannon. Altogether 

98 


THE MORRISSEY REPAIRED 


it was a very gay send-off. The Governor 
was out in his big rowboat, waving good-bye 
tous. Certainly Upernivik could have treated 
us no better, and we all appreciated it. 

And then we headed north again, with Dr. 
Rasmussen. And we felt mighty lucky to be 
on our way again, instead of retreating ‘south. 
Before us lay our third crossing of Melville 
Bay, which is quite a record for one season. 

Dr. Rasmussen, for instance, has crossed it 
about forty times. Probably he has travelled 
up here more than any other living man. He 
told me that once it took six weeks to get just 
across Melville Bay, his boat being frozen in 
solid in the pack ice, and just drifting. How 
lucky we have been to get across three times 
with practically no ice at all. 





99 





CHAPTER IX 


OUR FIRST NARWHAL 


FTER crossing Melville Bay again for 

the third time, and without stopping 

at Cape York, we arrived in Thule. Coming 

up, on the other side of Melville Bay, I got 

entirely cheated out of one stop. It was very 

early morning and I was sound asleep and 
they didn’t wake me. 

As the boats came out to meet the Morrissey 
the men waved their hats in greeting. But 
when they came near and saw that Rasmussen 
was aboard they started shouting and cheer- 
ing. The man running the engine in the 
little power boat was so excited that he for- 
got to stop the motor and ran the boat full 
speed and head on into the side of the vessel 

100 


OUR FIRST NARWHAL 


so hard that most of the people in his craft 
fell down. 

We brought Rasmussen to this trading sta- 
tion of his where he had not been for five years 
and Dad had agreed to take away for him to 
New York the fox skins they had traded from 
the Eskimos during the winter. Also Mr. 
Rasmussen’s manager, who is also his cousin, 
had been promised that he could go back to 
Denmark this year. He had been at Thule 
continuously for six years. The first time 
we were there an apple Dad gave him was the 
first he had eaten in all that time. 

We also took from Thule a native girl called 
Nette, who has been studying to be a nurse 
and is going back to Denmark to complete 
her education, living with Mrs. Rasmussen 
there. We will take them to Holsteinsborg 
where they will get a steamer for Denmark. 

Hans Nielsen is Rasmussen’s manager and 
he of course is very pleased at the chance to 


get away. He brought his own kayak on 
101 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


the Morrissey so that he can help us in 
hunting. 

While in Thule, early in the morning, Dad, 
Dan, Bob Peary and I went out in the motor 
boat with two Eskimos to look for seal. We 
went up the fjord about five miles inland to 
the foot of a glacier and saw about six, but 
couldn’t get near enough to shoot them. We 
took several long shots, without success. 

We had to go back then, for as soon as Niel- 
sen and Nette were ready we were leaving 
for Whale Sound. During that morning 
while they were packing up we had quite a 
dance outside in front of Mr. Nielsen’s 
house. Kel took movies of the party. We 
had a pail of candy and when it was passed 
around the Eskimos would dig in with both 
hands. But really they are most awfully 
polite and these nice people in the North never 
take anything without being asked first. 
And I think they never steal. It’s interest- 
ing to know what Mr. Rasmussen tells me, 

102 


OUR FIRST NARWHAL 


that in the Eskimo language there are no 
swear words. They just don’t use bad lan- 
guage. The worst thing to call a man is to 
say he is lazy or a bad hunter. 

From Thule we took a bunch of Eskimos, 
including one older man who had been with 
Peary and was very sick. He said to Cap’n 
Bob: “I wish for the good days of Pearyark- 
shua when we had plenty to eat and to wear.” 

Of course the Captain knew him well and 
told me that he used to be about the strongest 
Eskimo of the whole lot they had and one of 
the very best hunters. His name is Ahngmal- 
okto. Doctor Heinbecker gave him some 
medicine, and the skipper gave him tea and 
bread and jam, but he wasn’t able even to 
eat that. It was very sad. | 

Thule itself is at the head of North Star 
Bay, on a rocky beach that sweeps around 
like a crescent. Out at the sea end, on one 
side, is a huge hill with a flat table-like top 
with steep walls at the top then sloping 

103 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


down evenly in great rock slides which are 
called talus slopes. It’s a lot like a mesa or 
tableland in our own west. The name of this 
queer mountain is Oomunui. There are four 
frame buildings, the trading station, the fur- 
thest north in the world. And about a mile 
away, across the rock peninsula, is the native 
settlement, a scattered lot of tupiks, the sum- 
mer skin houses of the Eskimos, with the 
stone winter houses nearby along the shore. 
I suppose there are about forty people. 

Since 1910 Rasmussen has run this trading 
station. It is to help these northern Eski- 
mos, called the Smith Sound tribe. They 
are the furthest north people in the world. 
Before, they never had any regular chance 
to get things, or to trade their skins, except 
to whalers once in a while, or explorers. Be- 
fore Peary commenced coming about thirty 
years ago they had no guns or steel or any- 
thing else except what they made and found 
themselves. They used to make arrow heads 

104 


OUR FIRST NARWHAL 


out of meteorite chips, and made fire from 
flint they found. And about all their weap- 
ons and knives were made from ivory. The 
walrus tusk is very fine for this sort of thing. 

Even today they have very little, compared 
with the poorest people of the world we know. 
But they are healthy and happy and very 
good natured and kind. And of course they 
are great hunters. They have to be, to live. 

At Thule Rasmussen, and the Danish 
committee which works with him in running 
the thing, have a regular kingdom. Dad 
calls it a benevolent dictatorship, which 
means that Rasmussen is just about a king, 
but runs everything for the good of the 
people. They have money of their own, 
round pieces with holes in the middle, of 
three different values. The Station pays with 
these for the furs, and then the Eskimos use 
them in getting supplies from the store. 
Goods are sold at very low figures and the 
idea is, Mr. Rasmussen says, to make the 

105 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


Station just pay itsown way. As I have said 
in another chapter, we brought up a lot of 
stores from New York. And now we are 
taking back the fox skins of the winter’s 
catch. 

Early that afternoon, August 15th, we 
left Thule. 

The next morning when I came on deck 
we were just off Northumberland Island and 
I saw the very place where we had been 
wrecked and so nearly spent quite a time at. 

I was on the crosstrees on the lookout for 
walrus and saw some seals and two that 
might have been walrus. When I got cold 
Bob Peary took my place. Soon afterward 
we stopped running on account of fog, and 
most everyone turned in to sleep, for with 
the all-the-time sunlight we never seem to 
find time to get enough sleep. 

I was down in the main cabin when Mr. 
Nielsen came down and said to Carl, who 
speaks Danish, that there was a dead white 

106 





Harry Raven, Zodlogist, Shows how to Clean a Narwhal Skull. 





Working on a Narwhal Skeleton. 


OUR FIRST NARWHAL 


whale near. I got Dad and told him about 
it. In a few minutes they had a boat over 
and went out to get him. When they reached 
the floating animal they called back that it 
was a female narwhal, and not a white whale 
after all. 

They towed it in and we put two or three 
tackles on it and started to get it aboard. It 
was about fifteen feet long and weighed I sup- 
pose over a ton. It had been dead quite a 
time and smelt pretty bad, so we decided to 
open it as it hung beside the boat and get 
the intestines out and some of the blubber off. 
The inner meat proved to be sound and all 
right. 

We fixed a rowboat alongside and Harry 
Raven and Fred got in it and did the cutting 
up, with their oilskins on, for it was pretty 
messy. With the narwhal Harry found a 
little one. And he wasn’t so little either. 
He measured five feet seven inches. ‘This 
was carefully embalmed. That is, Harry 

107 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


pumped into its veins a fluid which pre- 
serves the flesh. It is to be taken back to 
the Museum just exactly as it is. I think a 
baby narwhal is a very rare specimen, and 
we all hope this one gets back in good con- 
dition. 





108 





CHAPTER X 


OUR ESKIMO ARTIST 


ARNAH is an Eskimo settlement on 
Whale Sound north of Thule and just 
inside Northumberland Island where we were 
wrecked. The last time we were not able to 
get in on account of ice. We headed for 
there now, to get hunters, the Whale Sound 
territory being fine for walrus and narwhal. 
Also some white whales are caught just to 
the north. 

When we were about three miles from Kar- 
naha kayak came alongside. A man climbed 
out who grinned from ear to ear when he saw } 
Rasmussen. He proved to be the missionary 
at Karnah, named Olsen, an old friend of 
Rasmussen’s. Seeing the masts he had come 

109 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


out to meet us. We were, of course, the 
only vessel of the year. He showed us the 
way in to Karnah, where there was plenty of 
good water for the vessel. 

By the time the anchor was down there 
were a dozen or more men on board. Soon 
Rasmussen and Dad went ashore and ar- 
ranged for hunters to go out after narwhal. 
Very soon after we got there great proces- 
sions of the narwhal began to move up and 
down the sound in front of the village. Sev- 
eral times we saw a kayaker practically on 
top of one, ready to throw the harpoon, but 
something happened and he didn’t get it. 
Another man came in, who had got a harpoon 
into a narwhal, and told us his line had 
broken. 

A narwhal seems to jump just about the 
same as a porpoise, only he runs larger. He 
is very pretty, with a mottled skin like castile 
soap with blotches of white and lead color. 
The male has a big tusk sticking out of his 

IIo 


OUR ESKIMO ARTIST 


head, on the left side and straight out in 
front. It is ivory, with a twisting spiral 
surface. The biggest tusk I’ve seen is about 
ten feet long. They have been called “Uni- 
corns of the Sea.”’ The biggest narwhal we 
got was fifteen feet long, and I expect they 
run up to twenty feet. 

We spent most of the night at Karnah, 
visiting and getting narwhal skulls, while 
the hunters were out. It was decided that 
Rasmussen would take Bob Peary and the big 
dory with the Johnson engine and go up the 
fjord to try and get a couple of narwhal. 

Later I learned that just after Dad had 
turned in at three-thirty two hunters got their 
narwhal near by. In the morning when I 
came on deck there was a fine big narwhal 
with a tusk. He was fifteen feet long, not 
counting the tusk, which was about seven 
or eight feet long. Later a small female was 
brought in, about nine feet long. | 

All day Fred and Harry worked on these 

III 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


narwhal. Because the narwhal were so heavy, 
to get them on board we had to use the two 
throat halyards. Fred took plaster casts of 
the heads and tails and fins. Photos were 
taken from all angles, and measurements and 
strips of skin were taken, so that a whole 
narwhal model can be constructed at the 
Museum. After this work was done we 
started in to clean the meat off the bones. 
Most of us wore rubber boots so as not to 
mind walking in the blood, but the Eskimos 
didn’t mind at all. They, of course, get the 
meat for themselves. While we would floun- 
der around and have to cut two or three times 
the Eskimos would go ahead very quickly 
and skillfully, as they have done this sort 
of thing so many times. The skeletons were 
completely stripped in a few hours. 

From Karnah we took with us six hunters 
with their kayaks to help us get walrus. Four 
of them used to be with Peary and their 
names are Etukashuk, Pooadloona, Kudluk- 


112 


punog sey Ul Aassersopy ay} WO 
oTTYA YOO SIY} Ul pas SoysjoYS oY} ope OYM ysHIV OWTYS| oy} ‘Geusey jo vynyey 





. 
= 
1 





Two Blond Eskimos! David and Nils. 


OUR ESKIMO ARTIST 


too and Kesingwah. The last named was 
one of the Eskimos who came back with 
Captain Bob from 87 degrees 47 minutes 
north, only a few miles from the North Pole 
when he was with Peary in 1909, who went 
on to the Pole itself. 

They are all fine looking men and although 
they speak very little English they catch 
on to things very quickly and are awfully 
nice people to be with. 

There are two fine boys. One is Pooad- 
loona’s son, Matak. The other is Nils, who 
is sixteen. He has very light hair, about the 
color of mine, and blue eyes. He comes from 
South Greenland, and his father, I guess, is a 
Dane. He is awfully good in a kayak and 
built solid all around. While three years 
older than I am he doesn’t come quite to my 
shoulder. Of course all these people are 
very small. Very few of the men, I think, 
are over five feet five inches, but they are 
built like oxes usually with short legs and 

113 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


thick bodies and a little fat although hard. 
This boy Nils has killed seal and narwhal all 
by himself. 

Also we took on board a nice Eskimo called 
Kakutia, which means something like ‘He 
of the Quiet Voice.’’ He is a fine artist and 
loves to make drawings of the weapons they 
use, of the animals and things like that. 

We gave him paper and pencils and during 
two days he worked along and made a fine 
lot of drawings. Some of them will be used 
as decorations in the book that will be made 
from this. It’s great fun to think that my 
little book about Greenland is to be illus- 
trated, partly, by a real Eskimo, and that 
the pictures themselves actually were made 
in the cabin of the Morrissey, here with me 
and Dad, right in Whale Sound in latitude 
seventy-eight north. 

Later on I found out that Kakutia is the 
son of Panikpah, whom Captain Bob knows 
very well. He was one of the Peary men and 
114 


OUR ESKIMO ARTIST 


was an artist too. A number of his sketches 
are used in different Peary books. It’s inter- 
esting to see this being able to draw inherited 
by the son from the father. 

We are giving Kakutia a big roll of paper, 
some pads, pencils and a fine lot of lovely 
crayons, most of them Crayola given me by 
Grandpa Bub. He is delighted with all this 
and I expect will have a lot of fun this winter 
drawing and coloring pictures. And of course 
we gave him also useful things, for he has 
been fine to me. I hope later, by Rasmussen 
or in some way, to send him copies of the 
book, for Dad says his name is to appear 
on the title-page as the one who made the 
decorations. 


115 





CHAPTER XI 


WALRUS HUNTING 


T about six-thirty in the evening of 
August 16th a little way off North- 
umberland Island we saw a herd of walrus. 
They were moving along in the water quite 
fast, diving now and then and rising up a lot 
likeporpoises. They get their food from the bot- 
tom mostly, eating clams and things like that. 
By the way, Captain Bob does a lot of 
dredging—that is, we drag a sort of net along 
the bottom to bring up the sea life there— 
and here in Whale Sound his hauls are the 
richest yet. There are clams and great 
numbers of shrimp. Which of course is why 
the walrus like it here. 


In a few minutes the Eskimos were in 
116 


WALRUS HUNTING 


their kayaks and out after them. It was 
very interesting to watch. One Eskimo would 
go ahead of the herd and make a lot of noise 
to attract their attention. Then the other 
hunter would come in behind very slowly 
and quietly and try to get within perhaps a 
dozen feet and then throw his harpoon with 
all his force into the walrus. There would be 
a very loud puff, like steam escaping, as he 
took breath and then a flip of his tail and he 
would disappear. The man in the kayak 
would back off quickly so the walrus wouldn’t 
come up under him. Then they would watch 
the float, which is an inflated sealskin, at- 
tached to the end of the harpoon line to see 
which way the harpooned walrus would go. 
As the float moved off, or was drawn under 
water by the diving animal, they would 
follow. It was all very dangerous, and many 
Eskimos are hurt and killed when angry wal- 
rus turn on their frail little boats which one 
toss of a walrus’ tusks would smash to bits. 
117 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


In attacking the walrus lifts his head and 
comes down on the thing he is attacking with 
the end of his sharp tusks, ripping things 
terribly. I saw them attack several floats 
that way. 

When the walrus came up, and the men 
could get close, the same sort of performance 
was gone through with again. Only this time 
they would try to get close with their lance, 
to stick it into the animal to kill him. The 
other animals in the herd often would stay 
close to the wounded one, barking and roar- 
ing something like a cow mooing, and puffing 
and blowing water. It is very noisy and very 
exciting. When the others come close, the 
Eskimos would bang their paddles on the 
paddle rest in front of them and yell, to scare 
off the other walrus who otherwise might 
attack them. Sometimes when scaring the 
walrus away they get within three or four 
feet of them. : 

In a short time there were four walrus 

118 





* 
Pooadloona Throws His Harpoon at a Walrus. 


“HENOSNYAL 9} 0} SOPIFT puv suozsToyHS oy} ‘SowTYys| oY} 0} JUD M BOT OY} [TV “yooq uo snyyepy 





WALRUS HUNTING 


harpooned, three of them lanced and dead 
and ready to be picked up by the Morrissey. 
We had the launch fast to one of them that 
was only wounded. We did not want to 
shoot him, as he had a fine head and the 
bullet is apt to break the bone structure and 
hurt it for use as a specimen. 

Art, Dad and Captain Bob went out in the 
launch to get him. The Captain wanted to 
lance him, himself. He told Art to do the 
shooting with his bow and arrows. Art shot 
at him seven times, all striking in the neck. 
He was bleeding badly and getting pretty 
mad. He would have died from the arrows, 
but they wanted to finish him as quickly as 
possible. 

He pulled so hard that he turned the Mor- 
rissey around. He was fast to the ship by 
a native line made of the hide of the bearded 
seal, or ugsug. Its wonderful strength is 
shown by its power to pull the vessel about. 

At last he gave up trying to get away and 

II9 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


made a rush right at the launch. He sort of 
got on his back and put a flipper on each side 
of the bow of the little boat and tore furi- 
ously with his tusks at the bottom. We 
were watching from the deck of the Morrissey, 
only thirty feet or so away, and we could see 
the splinters fly. He put two holes right 
through the boat. 

The Eskimos were in their kayaks and they 
and Captain Bob succeeded in lancing the 
big bull, who once came right up under a 
kayak which really almost slid right off his 
back as the kayaker paddled desperately away. 

After he was dead we hooked the two 
throat halyards on him and hoisted h’m on 
board, which was quite a job. Then we went 
around to get the other walrus which the 
hunters had killed. In all there were seven 
and a little one I will tell about in a minute. 

A nice thing about this kind of hunting is 
that not a pound of meat is wasted. As a 
matter of fact it is a blessing for the Eski- 

120 


WALRUS HUNTING 


mos. Every bit of it is taken by them and 
used for their own food and for dog food. Our 
coming just helped them get their supplies. I 
suppose in all they got four or five tons of 
meat, what with the walrus and the narwhal. 
After that Dad, Dan and myself went out 
in the little rowboat and followed along 
after two hunters in kayaks. They went 
right into a herd of about forty and har- 
pooned one and motioned for us to come up 
and shoot it. There was a good-sized herd 
within fifty yards of us, puffing, grunting and 
barking. Now and then stray animals would 
come up right close to the boat. They look 
awfully funny with their whiskered faces 
popping up on the surface and glaring at you 
like cross old men. Then they give a grunt 
and a spray of steam and down they go. 
When they were excited like this they 
formed sort of a circle with the tusks of all 
the old bulls facing out toward the hunters. 
I can’t imagine a more exciting sport. I wish 
I2I 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


that some day I could learn to use a kayak 
really well and try getting a walrus myself. 

When we were pretty close Dad fired five 
bullets, four of which, I think, hit him in the 
head and neck. But the rifle is only a 256, 
not a very big bore, and it didn’t do the 
work. Then Dan fired a shot with his big 
high-powered rifle and hit him in the back of 
the neck and he dropped instantly. This 
one floated. Many of them sink the min- 
ute they are dead. 

We went back to one that Doc and Keller- 
man had shot after we picked up the others. 
Two hunters in kayaks were waiting there. 
This was a big cow walrus. But most inter- 
esting was that beside her in the water were 
two young walrus. The older was a bull 
calf, a yearling I suppose. 

We wanted to get these young ones alive 
so Carl went for his lasso. Dad rowed Carl 
out in the little boat. Carl stood up swing- 
ing his lasso all ready to throw when he 

I22 


‘Jaeg fq pedoy snsyem Aqeg oy} ,,‘StsouyeH,, 








Hoisting a Walrus on Board, 


WALRUS HUNTING 


got the chance. They went right up along- 
side the old cow, who was floating partly out 
of water. 

When the tusked calf came up Carl threw 
the rope, but the first throw slipped off. 
Then it was evident that the smaller calf, 
which had no tusks, was easier to get, seem- 
ing to be less wild. So Carl went after him 
and about the third throw got the rope around 
him, which was quite a job because his head 
was small and slippery and he dove quickly. 

There was a great splashing and goings on. 
The little walrus wasn’t so very little. He 
weighed about 150 pounds and was as strong 
as a young bull. Carl hauled the rope in 
over the stern and finally got more of it around - 
the walrus and sort of hogtied him. Finally 
they dragged him over to the Morrissey and 
he was hauled up on deck with a burton, 
which is a tackle used to raise and lower the 
dories. In the meantime the other young 
walrus had disappeared. 

123 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


I suppose that perhaps this is the first time 
that a walrus ever has been captured with a 
rope. Anyway, it’s certainly the first time 
this particular cowboy has roped one. I 
know that polar bears have been roped before. 

We kept the little walrus on board for two 
days. Dad called him Halitosis. He didn’t 
smell so sweet. We tried feeding him milk, 
and he seemed to take a little, through a 
hose. He would bark fiercely at everyone. 
But the really sad thing was to see him when 
he first came aboard. The bodies of the 
other walrus were in a great heap on deck. 
At once he smelled around and found his 
mother and the poor little fellow got right 
over to her and sort of snuggled up close to her, 
quiet as could be. 

Later Harry killed him painlessly with 
chloroform and he was embalmed to be 
taken back just as he was to the American 
Museum of Natural History. | 


124 


CHAPTER XII 
ACROSS TO JONES SOUND 


E dropped all our hunters at Karnah © 
after a day there, during which we 
visited around and settled up what we owed 
the Eskimos for the work they had done for 
us. Of course all the walrus meat went to 
them, and also the meat from two more 
narwhal which had been captured while we 
were away, thanks to Dr. Rasmussen, who 
saw to it that everyone did all they could 
to get the specimens we wanted. 

There really were three more narwhal, but 
one of them was a little one which Harry 
Raven preserved whole, embalming it. The 
skeletons and skulls of the others were taken. 
Also Kellerman made some interesting mov- 
ies showing the work of landing the dead 

125 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


narwhal on the beach and cutting them up. 
This was at night, when it was cloudy and 
not bright enough for pictures. So some of 
the men lit bright flares which Kellerman had, 
which lit up the beach with a queer bright 
light that was almost blinding. 

When the narwhal were landed Kudluk- 
too and the others cut off great strips of the 
skin which they all love. These were handed 
around and all hands gobbled-up the stuff in 
great shape. The way they eat this sort of 
thing is to put a big sliver in their mouth 
until it is stuffed full, and then cut off the 
end outside their lips with a knife. Why 
they don’t sometimes cut their noses or lips 
I don’t know. Anyway, it looked awfully 
funny and ought to be good in the picture. 

I tried narwhal skin myself and don’t like 
it much. It’s sort of tough and seems to 
be swallowed without chewing. I think an 
auto tire inner tube would be about the 
same, only it would smell better. 

126 


ACROSS TO JONES SOUND 


_ Pooadloona and another hunter we took 
over to Northumberland Island. That after- 
noon we got some more walrus but while we 
were fooling around taking some movies we 
lost two of the animals. I think this discour- 
aged the Eskimos who couldn’t understand 
why the foolish white men would let good 
meat get away when they really had it killed, 
instead of trying crazy stunts for a man who 
looked into a machine and turned a crank. 
Anyway, there was one big walrus whose 
meat we took to Keate, the little town where 
we left these hunters. It was only a little 
way from the place where we had been 
wrecked. 

In the evening we started across Baffin 
Bay to go to Jones Sound on the Canadian 
side. We had intended to go further north 
to Etah, which was only about sixty miles 
away. But it was getting pretty late in the 
season and the Morrissey was giving Cap’n 
Bob a good deal of worry. While she was 


127 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


well patched up, she still leaked a bit and 
lots of places were sprung. For instance, 
the forward deck leaked so badly that when 
the walrus meat was piled on deck the blood 
dripped right down into our cabin and got 
on the table and especially into Bob Peary’s 
bunk. It just wasn’t possible to fix the deck, 
which had to be recaulked all over, until the 
vessel got to a shipyard. 

Anyway, it seemed better not to go much 
further north. Also, we had to go back to 
Holsteinsborg on the Greenland side to get 
the Hobbs party. If it wasn’t for that Cap- 
tain Bob would have gone to Etah. 

After a day of fine going with some hours of 
a pretty stiff wind and rather rough sea, we 
atrived at the mouth of Jones Sound where 
we were greeted with a thick fog that put ice 
on all the rigging. After going quite a way 
up Jones Sound, hoping to get to the lower 
land where there might be musk-oxen, we 
were stopped by thick pan ice. Also new ice 

128 


ACROSS TO JONES SOUND 


was forming in the night. Evidently winter 
was just around the corner. 

We turned around and went out again 
toward the mouth and then waited for the 
fog to clear up. There was lots of pan ice 
all around us and of course it wasn’t safe to 
risk getting caught by the ice too farin. A 
sudden change in the wind, for instance, 
might jam it all around us and keep us from 
getting out at all. 

In the early afternoon the fog disappeared 
and we went in to Craig Harbor, on the 
north shore of the sound on Ellesmere Land. 
Dad, Rasmussen, Doc and Joe the sailor 
went ashore and reported that the station 
was closed. ‘This is the most northerly police 
post in the world, occupied most of the time 
by the famous Northwest Mounted Police. 

Much to our disappointment there was 
nobody at the station. We learned later 
they had moved to a new station further 
north on Ellesmere Land. We left a note 

129 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


saying that we had been there. There were 
two main buildings, a barracks and a store 
house, with oil barrels and sacks of coal piled 
up around. It all looked very neat. The 
buildings themselves were locked. 

When we left Craig Harbor we saw two big 
bearded seal on the ice quite.a distance away. 
When the Morrissey got quite close to one 
Art Young shot him dead with a rifle with a 
beautiful shot right through the neck, and 
then he turned around and shot at the other. 
He hit him all right but he wriggled off the 
ice pan and most likely sank. 

When they were getting the first seal Jim, 
the sailor, who is used to killing seal on the 
spring Newfoundland seal hunts, jumped on 
the pan and cracked the seal over the head 
with a heavy seal hook. This broke the skull 
and injured the specimen for scientific use. 
So I was told to keep a watch out for more 
as we very much wanted to get a perfect 
specimen. 

130 


‘Iey pue praeg ‘yy ‘sof ‘ueg *148TY 01 WoT ‘snijeAA & sUISSoIq 





‘punog souof ul Ueg 99J ue UO SnITeAA ped e puL jy 





NEES Si 


Fas 


Be 





ACROSS TO JONES SOUND 


We were not sure that there were any wal- 
rus in Jones Sound. But soon Doc and I 
saw what we supposed were three big seals 
on pans of ice about a mile ahead of us. We 
were in the lookout with glasses. And our 
seal turned out to be walrus, and big ones, too. 

We headed right for them and Carl and 
Doc and Cal and Dad got in the bow with 
their guns. When they were pretty near 
they shot and hit the walrus, but they didn’t 
kill him. It is pretty hard to kill one, and 
if they have any life left they slide off the 
ice into the water. The poor big walrus 
lifted himself on his flippers and looked 
around to see where the noise came from 
and what it was all about. 

In the water they seem pretty fierce and 
getting at them is quite a job. But on the 
ice they seem very stupid and sort of pitiful 
and lumbering, like a huge big sleepy cow. 
Only of course those tusks are mighty danger- 
ous, and I believe there isn’t an animal that 

131 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


can fight with a walrus, even a polar bear. 
But they certainly can’t hear or see very well. 
And when they are asleep on the ice in the 
sun, if the water is quiet so the ice doesn’t 
rock and disturb them, it’s very easy indeed 
to get awfully close to them. 

This big walrus, although hit three times, 
started to get off the ice. Then Carl finished 
him with Dan’s heavy rifle. So we left him 
dead on that pan and moved over to the 
other pan where two more were asleep. 
Both of them were hit with the first shots, 
but both managed to get into the water. 
Carl drove my harpoon, from the ship, into 
one of them, but the other sank, although 
Nielsen, Rasmussen’s man with us on this 
part of the trip almost got his harpoon into 
that one. It was a shame to lose him. 

We all hate to kill anything and have it 
wasted. As a matter of fact I thought I 
was going to be awfully excited about killing 
things, but while it’s exciting all right I don’t 

132 


ACROSS TO JONES SOUND 


think I care an awful lot about it. Getting 
animals for food or for museums is all right. 
But I don’t believe I want any trophies just 
to look at. It seems fairer to get the fun of 
seeing them alive and to let them keep on up 
here. From what Dad says, and Cap’n 
Bob and the others, there must have been a 
great deal more game up here some years 
ago than there is now, and certainly other 
expeditions killed an awful lot. Also of 
course the Eskimos, now that they have 
rifles, killa lot. And after a while, I suppose, 
the game will be all gone just as it is in most 
of our own west. 

~ We saw another walrus not far off. The 
Morrissey got very close to him and Art 
put two arrows in his neck, shooting from the 
bowsprit so that a picture could be taken. 
The arrows might have killed him, for they 
certainly got in a long way and caused a lot 
of bleeding. But that would have taken 
some time, so the walrus was shot. 

133 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


None of these animals was wasted. Harry 
Raven took the brains for the Museum and 
the heads were kept by members of the expe- 
dition. While our crowd, I think, have had 
a pretty good time and certainly plenty of 
excitement, they have not had much real 
hunting. I know that Dad had hoped that 
the men who volunteered and came and have 
done lots of work would be able to get more 
fun out of it. So he is glad when there is a 
chance for them to get something to take 
back with them. The meat was saved for 
the Eskimos at Pond’s Inlet, where we were 


going. 


PEA Hi SO) 
(Hi a] 
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134 





CHAPTER XIII 


NANOOK! 


ey night in Jones Sound, after getting 
the walrus, was very beautiful. There 
was a great big full moon and a very pink 
and golden sunset. The sun really went 
down that night, although of course it stayed 
quite light. And it was the first time we 
had seen the moon for a long time. Both 
the sunset and the moon, one in the west, 
the other in the east, lasted all the night, 
reflected over a very thin coat of silvery new 
ice. 
Dad and I stayed up all night. Dad shot 
a bearded seal on a pan, a pretty good shot 
getting him right through the head. Then 
Ralph got out on the pan and put a strap 
135 








ot 
. 
DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


around the seal and we hoisted him on board 
with a burton and were off again. A little 
while later we saw another big one on a pan 
and Dad tried a long shot and missed, shoot- 
ing high. On the second shot he hit him, 
but the seal wriggled off and came to the 
surface in a few minutes. Dan and Dad 
went out in the skiff and tried to get him but 
they would go close to the place where he 
was and he would go down and come up at 
another place. There was no use shooting 
him unless they got close enough to put a 
seal hook in him, for he would just sink. 
After a while they gave up and started 
back. Then three seal came right up near 
them, popping out of the water to see what 
it was all about. But they dodged back too 
quick for a shot. Fe 
The new ice was forming quickly and the 
barometer was dropping. So we began to 
move out to the mouth of the Sound, as 
Cap’n Bob wanted to get out of there before — 
136 





Enough for Several Fine Duck Messes. 


OIpey JUay Joyeayy nO surfoluq 





NANOOK! 


we might have trouble with the ice in case 
of a storm. Of course if it had been earlier 
in the season we would have liked to stay in 
Jones Sound, where there certainly was good 
hunting. 

We watched and watched, but saw nothing 
more. We were working easterly following 
along the edge of big fields of floe ice, that is, 
floating pans, some of them just little pieces 
a few yards square, and others perhaps a 
hundred feet or more, or a number of pans 
floating about together, partly joined by new 
ice. You could almost see this new ice form- 
ing. The thermometer I suppose was about 
25 degrees, or perhaps colder. Little crystals 
gathered together in the quiet water and then 
there was a thin sheet of rubbery ice. As the 
boat moved through it the surface held with 
a lot of strength. It would wave as the 
ripples from the bow worked out under it, 
and took a lot of pressure before it actually 
broke. 

137 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


It was just about four o’clock in the morning 
and I was going to turnin. I wascold. Butit 
had been fun staying up and I don’t think I 
ever saw anything so beautiful as that light 
on the ice and the calm grey water, with the 
snowy mountains and dark cliffs and white 
glaciers on both sides of the sound. 

Dan was still working, cleaning up his wal- 
rus head. Dad was at the bow. Ralph was 
at the wheel, and Jim on lookout. 

‘Bear! Bear!”’ 

Suddenly Ralph called that out, in a low 
voice. 

Jim rang for the engine to stop and at once 
the Captain, who was below getting a nap 
after being up about twenty-four hours, 
came on deck. 

From where we were all that could be seen 
of the bear was a small yellow spot away 
over on the other side of a big pan. I was 
told to go aloft and keep my eyes on him and 
to yell if he went into the water. If a bear 

138 


NANOOK! 


gets into the water it is pretty easy to get 
him, for he doesn’t swim too fast to catch. 
But if he gets to land he is likely to get away. 
Cap’n Bob was afraid he might start across 
the big pan one way, as we went round the 
other. 

Anyway, the Morrissey went around the 
pan and nosed up, very quietly, to within 
about thirty yards of him. The bear held 
his nose high in the air and then came toward 
the ship making a very pretty jump across 
some young ice. He seemed not a bit afraid, 
only very interested in this strange new huge 
animal that had come to bother him. 

Cap’n Bob wanted to be sure for us to get 
this first bear, so several took a shot together. 
‘The rifles of Dad and Dan and Doc all blazed 
out together and later we found that each 
shot hit and that any one of them apparently 
would have been fatal. 

Jim and Ralph jumped out on the ice from 
the bowsprit and made a line fast to the dead 

139 





DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


bear and he was hoisted aboard and laid up 
forward, the rest of the deck being pretty 
full of walrus meat and skins and heads. 
About that time we looked pretty messy and 
like a butcher shop, but right away, as the 


_ barometer was falling and it felt like snow, 
all hands went to work and kept at it until 


breakfast, by which time things were pretty 
shipshape. | 

After that, by the way, we had a wonder- 
ful assortment of meat. There was walrus 
heart and meat, and bear meat hanging in the 
rigging and a big bunch of auks and murres 
hanging in the shrouds, and also some fine 
seal meat. Some of this seal we ate at din- 
ner that next day, boiled not very much, and 
it certainly was fine. So for some time we 
had a pretty fine meat diet. 

Right away, too, Billy boiled out a couple of 
bottles of bear oil for Dad and Rasmussen. 
This is great stuff for shoes and leather. 

And speaking of bear, I now have two com- 

140 








-$owolfaq OWTYS| poziig v ‘OPI [PUAN Jey 0} AVM TSR oF} plavd Aoys yeyeIA pue copyn|pn sy 





NANOOK! 


plete outfits of Eskimo clothing. The north- 
ern kind has nanookies, or bear pants. Nette 
made these on board from a part of a skin 
Dr. Rasmussen gave Dad, and at Karnah 
when we stopped the Eskimo women there 
chewed it up in their teeth so that the hide 
became very soft and easy to work. Then 
there are sealskin boots with rabbit fur 
inside and a sealskin netcha or jacket with a 
hood to go over the head. It is a wonder- 
fully warm and comfortable rig, this north- 
ern outfit. 

This bear of ours, they said, was a four- 
year-old. He measured seven feet and four 
inches long and they guessed he weighed 
close to six hundred pounds. Later on Fred 
fixed up the skin and the head to be taken 
back and made into a rug. I worked on the 
skull, which takes quite a lot of work to clean 
all the flesh off. 

So that made a pretty exciting finish to a 
really wonderful day. We were sorry for 

a 141 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


just one thing. There wasn’t enough light 
at that time of the morning or late night to 
get any pictures of the bear. Anyway, in 
about eight hours we had got walrus and 
bearded seal and then the pride of it all, 
Nanook the bear. 

And a funny part of it is that just the 
night before, Dad had sent a radio to Mother 
saying that pretty soon he hoped to find a 
bear on one of the ice pans, and that his 
skin was mortgaged to make a rug for my 
little brother June to play on in front of the 
fire this winter. 

Then so soon after that we got the bear and 
the rug for Junie! 





142 





CHAPTER XIV 


AT POND’S INLET 


O* August twenty-eighth after a long 

time in very thick fog we at last saw 
land only a little way off. For a couple of 
days we had been working down the coast of 
Devon Island and Bylot Island, wanting to 
get to Pond’s Inlet where there is a station 
of the Northwest Mounted Police and also a 
post of the Hudson Bay Company. 

Cap’n Bob had not been able to see land 
or to take any observations but we knew 
pretty well from dead reckoning that we had 
reached the south shore of Pond’s Inlet. 
“Dead reckoning,’ you know, means find- 
ing out where you are by the record of the 
number of miles the log shows the ship has 

143 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


travelled. The log itself is a little instru- 
ment like a small propeller which is let out 
on a long rope at the stern; it turns around fast 
or slow according to the speed at which the 
boat travels, and the revolutions it makes 
are recorded showing the number of knots, 
or sea miles, covered. 

While we were drifting around in the fog, 
barely in sight of the high land which now 
and then showed through the fog, Dad and 
Dr. Rasmussen paddled about a bit in a small 
boat shooting murres and dovekies. In quite 
a short time Dad shot fifty-one, which made 
several meals for the crowd. 

Then later we put the dory over with the 
Johnson engine in it. It made a good little 
boat to go ahead and see how deep the water 
was. One of the sailors was in her using the 
lead and calling back to the Morrissey the 
depths of water he found. 

After a few miles of groping along that way 
we stopped near shore where a little stream 

144 


AT POND’S INLET 


came down right beside a glacier. We only 
had a few gallons of water left on board in 
the big tank, and nearly all the casks were 
empty. While the crew took the casks ashore 
and filled them, Bob Peary, Ed Manley and 
I went out rowing in the fog looking for seal. 
We'd seen quite a few during the day. Of 
course we didn’t get out of sight of land, 
but kept going down along the shore, so we 
could find our way back. You really could 
see only about a hundred yards. 

We shot at a couple of seal but missed 
them. They are pretty hard to hit in the 
water. They come up just for a minute or 
even a few seconds and take a look at you 
if you are close and then dive. We were just 
going after another which seemed to be keep- 
ing pretty well on the surface when we heard 
the fog horn on the Morrissey. That was a 
signal that we should come back. 

A little later we went ashore and on a 
rocky hillside found a whaler's grave. He 

145 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


was a harpooner on a famous whaler, the 
Diana, of Dundee, Scotland, and was buried 
there in 1903. Some other whalers’ graves 
not far away were a hundred years old, for 
there were many of them up here as early as 
that. During some seasons, I was told, as 
many as a couple of thousand men would be 
in these waters and some vessels wintered in 
little harbors along the coast. Now the 
whales are about all gone and the whalers are 
out of business. : 

The fog cleared up later in the day and we 
made our way to Albert Harbor which was 
one of the old whaler’s headquarters. There 
are high cliffs on all sides so it is wonderfully 
well protected and the water is very deep. 
In the old days they used to bring the ves- 
sels right up to the rock slides at the foot of 
the cliffs and put ballast on. 

Then we went on further up the Inlet, 
which really is a broad sound mostly a dozen 
miles wide to the place where the Hudson 

146 


AT POND’S INLET 


Bay Company’s post is. Right next to the 
Post is the detachment of the Royal Canadian 
Mounted Police. The Police have a barracks 
and a store house, and the H. B. C. about 
the same, with a store too. Then down along 
the beach are a dozen little shacks and some 
sod houses, the homes of the natives who live 
there. But most of the Eskimos in that 
part of the country live far away from the 
post, in villages out where the hunting is 
better. 

There were six white men, three of the 
Police and three H. B. C. Maurice Tim- 
bury was the constable in charge for the 
Police and George Dunn is the factor at the 
H. B. C. Everyone was most awfully nice 
to us and they gave usa grand time. We had 
dinner with the Police and then a dance at 
the H. B. C. house, which was very lively 
and lots of fun. The music was a Victrola 
and the Eskimos came in and danced. Also 
Nette, the Greenland girl whom we are tak- 

147 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


ing around to Holsteinsborg, was quite the 
belle of the ball. She dances well and Dr. 
Rasmussen is a great dancer. 

The Eskimos here in Baffin Land seem to 
be much different from those in Greenland. 
The women tattoo their faces and wear differ- 
ent sorts of clothes. Just there at the Post, 
where they get lots of white men’s things, 
the native clothing isn’t seen much and I 
don’t believe that so much “store” food is 
So very good for them. Anyway, the crowd 
I saw seemed sort of puny and soft compared 
with the fine husky fellows we had been seeing 
on the other side of Baffin Bay. The kayaks 
over here seemed bigger and wider than 
those of the Greenland Eskimos. 

The meat from the walrus we had killed 
up on Jones Sound we brought to Pond’s 
Inlet and gave it to the natives there. They 
seemed very pleased, for it is fine dog food and 
they do not get walrus in those waters any 
more. In return for our gifts some women 

148 


AT POND’S INLET 


came on board and finished fleshing off the 
walrus and seal skins which we had not dorie 
yet. Then they were salted some more and 
put in barrels and headed up to go back to 
the Museum. It was a terrible job to get 
the grease off the decks and for a few days 
after they were as slippery as a skating rink. 

We went down to some old Eskimo winter 
houses, or stone igloos a mile or so from the 
Station. They were very old and were used 
by a people so many years ago that the pres- 
ent Eskimos don’t know anything about them 
and believe that they were quite a different 
race. Dr. Rasmussen says that from the 
things found in this old village, compared 
with others that have been studied, the 
people lived there probably about a thousand 
years ago and in some places even earlier and 
about the time the Norsemen first came to 
Greenland in the year one thousand and 
later. 

These old Eskimo stone igloos are built in 

149 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


a circle, mostly about fifteen feet or a little 
more across. There is a small outer room 
which is the entrance hall, chiefly to keep 
the inner place warmer. It is so low that 
they must have had to creep in on their hands 
andknees. After creeping in there seems to be 
a kind of step up into the inner room. The 
main room, I guess, was about five feet high, 
with a raised platform all around it a couple of 
feet above the central floor which js just a 
sort of small square in the middle. 

In one corner of the raised part, usually 
near the door, the cooking was done. The 
platform at the back was used for sleeping, 
and it is all built up very neatly with flat 
stones, the walls made of stone and turf and 
Whale bone. The roof was flat rock and 
bone. In some places whale ribs seem to 
have been used as rafters to support the walls 
and perhaps the ceiling. They certainly must 
have been very warm and strong houses. J 
forgot to say that they really are partly 

150 


‘peoyy uoodIeyT OwNYysSY JUoTNUY Ue plAvg SMOYS UossnuIseY ‘Iq 











Two Arctic Hare from Pond’s Inlet, 


AT POND’S INLET 


under ground, for the floor level is usually a 
couple of feet lower than the level of the 
outer ground. 

We did some digging around these houses 
and at some of the old graves. And the next 
day Dad and I and Dan went with Mr. Gall 
and his assistant, Abraham Ford of Labrador, 
in their motor boat twelve miles along the 
Inlet to some other old houses. 

We found a few very nice things like spear 
heads and snow knives made of bone and 
ivory, harpoon handles and a little cup or 
dish carved out of bone. Later on Dad got 
from some of the white men the things they — 
had collected so that altogether we got to- i 
gether quite a fine lot of very interesting i 
things. And many of them really came fron 4 @ .™ 
the ‘stone age’”’ of these people, when they 
made everything they had from stone, like 
flint arrowheads, or from bone or ivory. 

It is quite wonderful to know that with 
these very primitive weapons which they 

I5I 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


made themselves they were able to kill the 
huge sperm whales. Yet of course they did, 
for their houses are surrounded with the 
bones. And in the old times these waters 
surely were just full of whale, walrus, seal 
and narwhal. 

Timbury and the two other constables, 
Murray and Dunn, went with us in the after- 
noon hunting for Arctic hare. We saw one 
but couldn’t get near enough because one of 
the dogs had followed and would chase it 
every time we got in sight. Ed shot one duck 
and I shot two on a little lake about two miles 
from the settlement. We didn’t know how to 
get them so Ed took off his clothes and waded 
out in the icy water up to his armpits and 
got them. 

Here at Pond’s Inlet, by the way, is the 
most northerly radio station in the world. 
Both the Police and H. B. C. have a short 
wave receiving set, and the Police also have a 
low power sending set, which I guess doesn’t 

152 


AT POND’S INLET 


work very well. In Mr. Gall’s house we were 
interested to see our old friends the Ever- 
eady Batteries which he uses entirely. Dad 
arranged with them to have a special pro- 
gram, for a few minutes anyway, on the Ever- 
eady hour later in November, if it could be 
fixed up. That is, he wanted to have part 
of a program of broadcasting in New York 
arranged so that it would be directed right at 
Pond’s Inlet and they up there could hear 
Dad in New York talking to them. 

When we left the settlement it was so windy 
and rough that we stopped at Albert Harbor 
again. Art and Ed and I went ashore on the 
steep rocky island to look for hares. We. 
climbed the first hill and saw a lot of sign but 
no hares. 

“'There’s one!’? All of a sudden Art called 
out. ‘‘Over there by the big rock. Dave, 
you sneak over behind that pile of rocks and 
Ed and I will stay here and attract his 
attention.” 

153 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


I crept slowly toward the side of the hill 
and when I was out of sight of the hare I ran 
for all I was worth and then slowed down and 
looked carefully over the top. There he was, 
about sixty yards away, looking at Art and 
Ed. 

I aimed in a hurry and shot and he tumbled 
right over in his tracks. The twenty-two bul- 
let went right through his shoulders and into 
his heart and out the other side. We saw 
that his back was a light greyish color and 
that he was a lot bigger than the largest 
American rabbits. In winter, I’m told, they 
get pure white. 

We chased another all over the place and 
almost lost him. Just by luck I had gone 
around the other way from the others and saw 
his ears sticking up a long way off. I whistled 
to make him stand up, but when he did I 
missed and he started running. I shot at 
him on the run and with a lot of luck got him 
right through the hips and backbone. He 

154 


AT POND’S INLET 


was larger than the first one, and pure 
white. 

We tried some others but with no luck. 
It was about ten o’clock when we got back to 
the boat, and almost dark. Beginning here 
at Pond’s Inlet we have had our first real 
nights. The sun sets and for some hours it 
gets dark. 

Anyway,-I asked Dad to send a radio 
message to Mother telling her that I am fix- 
ing up a couple of nice Arctic hare skins 
for her, to make a collar or something out of. 
And Fred is showing me how to make powder 
puffs out of the tails. 





159 





CHAPTER XV 


MORE BEARS 


SE, second we were working 

down the eastern coast of Baffin Island, 
intending to cross over Baffin Bay toward 
Holsteinsborg to get the Hobbs party. There 
was no ice to speak of, only a few scattered 
bergs, and the weather continued to be pretty 
nice, sunny and quite warm, which was very 
unusual for this time of year. 

Just at seven o’clock in the morning Dad 
woke me up and said that there were three 
bears on a small berg near us. Ralph and 
Jim, the same watch that discovered the first 
bear, had seen them. All hands turned out 
SO we would not miss the fun. 

Carl was getting his rope ready while Art 

156 


MORE BEARS 

got out his bow and arrows for the hunt. 
No guns were to be used. Dad wanted to 
have this entirely a stunt for the bow and 
the roping, and for motion pictures. Keller- 
man had his two big motion picture cameras 
on deck, and a good many of the crowd were 
using their still cameras. Also Bob Peary had 
a small movie camera but he was on watch 
in the engine room so I ran it for him the 
best I could. 

The Morrissey went right up close to the 
berg and we got a lot of pictures. There 
was a big mother bear and two cubs which 
had been born about February, they told 
me. They were pretty big and husky and 
weighed probably more than 150 pounds each. 
It was queer to see the bear away out here 
in the water, nearly twenty miles from land. 
But later Mr. Rasmussen told us often they 
travel hundreds of miles almost all the way 
in the water. Swimming seems to be about 
as easy for them as walking. Cap’n Bob 

157 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


has found them swimming away down off 
the Labrador. 

As we got close the old bear walked right 
down to the water’s edge with the two cubs 
following. We headed away from the berg 
and swung around to leeward to let them 
calm down. That seemed to satisfy them. 
Perhaps they thought the ship was just a big 
dirty piece of ice. 

Anyway, they went back up on the ice 
and settled down. ‘The two cubs lay down 
close to the mother, and Harry, looking 
through the glasses, said he could see that 
they were getting their breakfast. 

When we came close again for Art to get 
a bow and arrow shot the old bear got really 
wotried and made for the water. They swam 
off in a row that looked like three butter 
balls, the old one first and the two little ones 
trailing. They are not really quite white, 
but seem to be sort of yellowish, almost but- 
ter color, especially when just their heads 

158 


a : ev, 
Fert 
WS ca 


°Z19qa0J JY} UO SIv9g IejOq SUL 











The Polar Bear and Her Two Cubs Swim Away from the Berg. 


MORE BEARS 


show in the water. Their black noses show 
out more than anything and their eyes. 

We came within thirty feet of them in the 
Morrissey two or three times, taking pic- 
tures. The mother bear would turn around 
and growl at us, and sort of grunt to the 
children to hustle along and get away from 
this strange creature that was following them. 

We wanted to get them back on the berg, 
if possible, so we put a dory over with Carl 
in it and rowed by Ralph and Joe, to try to 
herd them toward the ice again. Several 
times after a lot of trouble they got them 
headed back near the ice but they wouldn't 
go up on it again. It was a queer game 
of tag. 

In the meantime Jim on board was working 
on a rough cage for the cubs because Dad had 
decided to get them alive if it were possible 
to take them home to the Bronx Zoo at New 
York. At first they were going to let me 
shoot one as I did want to get a bear quite 

159 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


by myself. But I agreed that it would be 
a lot better to get them alive if possible. It 
happens that in 1910 Cap’n Bob up right near 
here captured the huge polar bear that has 
been at the Zoo ever since, ‘Silver King.’”’ 
He died last year. 

Art got out on the bowsprit with his bow 
and arrows and a file with which he gave the 
big two-inch steel blades of the arrows a last 
sharpening. 

Kellerman, at his camera, asked Art if he 
was ready. Art said he was all ready. So 
Cap’n Bob took the vessel right up close 
to them again. The first time Art couldn’t 
shoot because one of the cubs was swimming 
almost on top of the big bear. So we made 
another circle and came up on them again. 
It was a lot of trouble, because there was 
quite a rough swell and for the camera fixed 
up at the bow on the starboard side you had 
to get the vessel into position pretty ex- 
actly. 

160 


MORE BEARS 


Art fired his big bow. By the way, it’s 
got about a ninety-five pound pull which 
means it’s all a very strong man can do to 
even get the string back and the bow bent, 
far less aim it and all that. I can’t even bend 
the bow half way. I’ve seen Art put the 
arrows through two-inch planks of soft wood. 

The first two arrows hit the big bear in the 
back. It was a hard mark, just the neck 
and a bit of body showing in the water, and 
Art standing in a mean place on the bowsprit, 
and the boat rolling a good deal. 

The bear turned around and roared and sort 
of cuffed at one of the cubs who was close. 
On the next circle Art used two more arrows 
and I guess one went into her pretty deep. 
She bled a lot and her head went under the 
water. Then she came up and kind of rubbed 
noses with the cubs and then her head dropped 
again. She was dead. And I guess it was 
the first time a polar bear ever has been 
killed with a bow and arrow, certainly since 

161 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


the days when the Eskimos used primitive 
weapons. 

The cubs stayed around the body until 
Carl in the dory came up close. Then they 
swam off, barking like a whole kennel of dogs. 
We hoisted the big bear on board and cov- 
ered her with a tarp. Then we started after 
the cubs, and it was about the most exciting 
thing I think I have ever seen, and an awful 
lot of fun. 

Carl sort of wedged himself up in the bow 
of the dory, which was bobbing around a lot 
in the swell, and the men rowed him towards 
the cubs as the Morrissey worked in close 
where Kel could get the pictures. 

The very first shot Carl got his bear. He 
swung his rope about his head in the air and 
let it go. The noose fell as fine as could be 
right around the cub’s head. It was a great 
show. The folks back in Pendleton, Ore- 
gon, who sent us that rope for Carl would 
have been tickled to death. And right there 


162 


MORE BEARS 


Dad said we would call one of the cubs ‘‘ Cow- 
boy.” The first one was to be named “‘Cap’n 
Bob.” 

The little bear didn’t know what had hap- 
pened until they began pulling himin. Then 
he commenced growling and snarling and bark- 
ing. When Carl got him alongside the dory 
he chewed at the rope and scratched and tore 
at the boat and at Carl and tried to climb 
aboard. He certainly was full of fight. One 
clean swipe from his claw would be enough to 
rip an arm off, I suppose. Carl wore heavy 
gloves and leather wristlets. 

When the bear tried to climb in Carl would 
bat him in the face with his hand or pry his 
paws off the gunwale. He bit at Carl and 
was real snooty. It wasagreat party. After 
a while, when he had towed the dory about a 
bit, Carl managed to get a rope sling down 
around his body behind his shoulders, and 
with this he was hoisted aboard with a tackle. 

Coming up and on deck he bit everythmg 

163 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 
 } 


he could get at and tried to tear the sails he 
reached, and generally raised Ned. We hoisted 
him up in the air and with a smaller rope sort 
of led and dragged him forward to the cage 
which was on the port side of the ship by the 
bow. We had to lift him over the jumbo and 
lower him on the other side into the entrance 
of his cage. 

On the way he knocked down the galley 
stove pipe. Then we put a line around one 
of his front paws and then put the line under 
the bottom of the cage and pulled down on it 
for all we were worth. We got his head down 
in that way and then we all had to push his 
hind quarters. After about half an hour we 
had him in the cage. 

Then Carl went out and roped the other 
cub, who had swam away about a quarter 
of amile. This one we got over on top of the 
cage all right but then when Will was standing 
up leaning on the jumbo boom the bear jumped 
right up at him and Will just gct away in time. 

164 


-podoy aH Sqno Iveg Iejod oY} JO SU puv [Ie 














as 





Art Young and the Bear He Killed with Bow and Arrow. 


i sterprare 


eA 







The bear le dite uf her oe. been. It 
was very cl e. Te  26t aa in the cage the 
same as the other one. ™ 

We gave them a duck and to our surprise 
they ate it all up ina minute. It is very un- 
usual for an animal to eat so soon after he is 
in captivity. They must have been pretty 
hungry on that berg. We thought we would 
see how they liked the dog food we had on 
board, in cans. It’s called Ken-l-Rations and 
is pretty good stuff even for men. The Es- 
kimos North liked it a lot. Well, our bears 
just loved it. They actually will bite chunks 
of it off a big spoon which Carl holds through 
the side of the cage. Dad has asked him to 
look after ““Cap’n Bob”’ and ‘‘Cowboy.”’ 


And that really ended the expedition. Of 
course there was plenty more, and it was a 
month before we got home. 

After getting the bear cubs we went across 
Baffin Bay to Holsteinsborg and picked up the 
165 





#* 


DAVID GOES TO GREENLAND 


Hobbs party. Then we started home. And 
the first day out we dropped our tail shaft 
and propeller, a third of the way across Davis 
strait. That meant we had to go the rest of 
the distance to Sydney without any engine. 





We made those 1400 miles with sails alone, 

and we had a couple of grand gales and a real 

hard time getting through Belle Isle Straits 

and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, what with fogs 

and head winds. It took 15 days of sailing. 

But it was sort of a fine way to finish up a trip 
166 


MORE BEARS 


on a vessel which was really meant for sails 
alone before we put in the engine. 

And this, now that I’m back from Greenland, 
I’m writing on the Morrissey as we're in sight 
of Cape Breton Island. And it all will be sent 
down by railroad from Sydney and perhaps 
the little book will be about ready by the time 
we're back home—which is a pretty good 
place to be! 





167 





Any boy or girl or grown-up who has 
enjoyed this book will want to read 


David 
Goes Voyaging 


That’s the story of David’s journey 
with the Arcturus Expedition to the 
Galapagos Islands on the Equator— 
volcanoes, sea-lions, pirates, lost treas- 
ure, sharks, harpooning n’everything! 
Really a bully book written by David 
when he was 12 years old. 

“David Goes Voyaging” is a book 
just like this one. The price is $1.75. 
Get it at your bookstore or send to the 
publishers (10 cents extra for postage). 


e 


G. P. Putnam’s Sons 
2 West 45th Street 
New York City 


Another bully book for boys and girls, 
written by a boy! 


Deric in Mesa Verde 


is a boy’s record of his life in Mesa Verde 
National Park, out in the cliff-dwellers’ 
country of Southern Colorado. 

Deric himself is just thirteen years old. 
His father, the superintendent of the Park, 
is an archaeologist, and his mother a student 
and lover of the fascinating country in which 
they live. So Deric from the beginning has 
had rare opportunity to soak up under- 
standingly the unusual interests of his 
environment. 

Here is his own story in his own words. 
It’s full of the lore of yesterday and the 
lure of today—exploring and treasure-hunting 
finds and adventures, Indians, wild animals, 
folk-lore, bird-nesting. A book to delight 
boys and girls and grown-ups. With many 
photographs and sketches. Price $1.75— 
Postage 10 cents. 


@ 
G. P. Putnam’s Sons 


2 West 45th Street 
New York City 


























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